There is enough FX in Ukraine - PM Yatsenyuk
KYIV. Feb 25 (Interfax) - There is enough foreign currency on the Ukrainian market, which is evident from the market volume, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said, explaining its outflow from the country by the National Bank's insufficient control.
"Over the past nine months, $51.5 billion has been sold on the country's financial market. This is nearly tenfold of the entire volume of the gold and foreign currency reserves. That is, the market is flooded by dollars," the prime minister said at a government meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday.
The overall daily volume of foreign currency deals conducted by banks and controlled by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) varies from $100 million to $170 million, he said.
"This means that there is enough foreign currency in the country. And this means that some of this foreign currency has been bought and is still being bought for speculative purposes, so as to buy foreign currency at a lower exchange rate and then sell at a higher one," says Yatsenyuk, who served first as a first deputy chairman and then acting chairman of the NBU from 2003 to 2005.
"We have repeatedly advised our colleagues from the National Bank to bring the situation under strict control so as foreign currency not be driven abroad under so-called import contracts, as if to buy some goods, and then these goods are not shipped either within 60 or 90 days, and the currency is kept abroad so as to wait for a higher exchange rate," he added.