NBU's forex interventions up 31.1% last week amid slight exchange rate fluctuations

MOSCOW. Dec 23 (Interfax) - The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) increased dollar sales on the interbank market by $278.5 million, or 31.1% week-on-week to $1.174 billion last week, Ukrainian media reported, citing the statistics published on the regulator's website.

It was the NBU's second largest forex intervention this year following the result recorded in the third week of February, but it was still $243.9 million lower than in the same week of December 2024.

In the first four days of last week, the average daily negative balance of currency purchases and sales by legal entities grew to $148.6 million from $96 million for the same period the week before, amounting to $594.4 million in total, the NBU said.

At the same time, the cash market's negative balance from Saturday to Thursday dropped to $28.3 million from $43.6 million the week before last. Sales of non-cash forex were larger than its purchases for all of these days.

The official hryvnia-dollar exchange rate, which began last week at UAH 42.1936/$1, weakened to UAH 42.3384/$1 in the space of three days, but ended the week at the level of UAH 42.2481/$1.

The dollar exchange rate on the cash market followed the trajectory of the official exchange rate, gaining around 4 kopecks in total over the week. The buy rate was UAH 42.11/$1, and the sell rate was UAH 42.46/$1.