Ukrainians are replenishing their foreign currency reserves. The National Bank is helping them
3 January 17:56
In December 2024, the volume of foreign currency purchases by the population exceeded its sales by $1.3 billion, which is the second highest figure for the year, with the highest figure being $1.39 billion in October last year. This is evidenced by the data of the National Bank of Ukraine, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
The demand of the population for both cash and non-cash currency increased in December amid the depreciation of the hryvnia.
Accordingly, Ukrainians bought $2.49 billion worth of cash currency and sold $1.29 billion worth of cash currency during the month. In addition, individuals purchased $445.95 million worth of non-cash foreign currency and sold $339.64 million worth.
In total, in 2024, households bought $12.22 billion more foreign currency than they sold.
The NBU actively sold foreign currency
In December, the National Bank of Ukraine sold a record $5.3 billion worth of foreign currency. MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak claims that this has never happened before in history.
According to the regulator, the NBU’s net sales of dollars in December 2024 increased to $5.28 billion, compared to $2.73 billion in November, $3.43 billion in October, $3.21 billion in September, and $2.68 billion in August last year.
In total, the NBU sold about $34.94 billion on the interbank market in 2024, and bought only $0.13 billion.
However, Danylo Hetmantsev, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, recently balanced the picture by mentioning that the NBU has quite high foreign exchange reserves of $43.7 billion. So there is something to sell and someone to buy it.
Hryvnia exchange rate records encourage people to buy dollars
In December, the dollar exchange rate on the cash market fluctuated around UAH 42.00. But it repeatedly updated its highs, and the hryvnia, respectively, updated its lows.
And now the Ukrainian currency is updating its historical low again. Following the results of interbank trading, the National Bank set the official hryvnia to dollar exchange rate for Monday, January 6, 2025, at 42.0889 UAH/USD, compared to 42.0385 UAH/USD on Friday. This is a new historical low, the previous one was recorded on December 31 at 42.0390 UAH/USD.
