Ukrainians boost foreign currency purchases 2.3 times in 1st week of flexible exchange rate
MOSCOW. Oct 10 (Interfax) - The purchases of foreign currency by the Ukrainian population in the first workweek of October, when the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) switched from the fixed exchange rate to its managed flexible rate regime, exceeded its sales by $291.8 million, up 2.3 times compared with the last week of September, Ukrainian media reported citing the NBU.
The surges in the demand for foreign currencies were seen on October 2 and October 3, that is, on the day of the announcement of the regime change and the first day of abandoning the fixed exchange rate, according to the NBU. As a result, its net purchases on the aforementioned days reached $85.9 million and $82.0 million, respectively.
On the last two days of the week the purchases fell to $37.4 million and $39.5 million, the central bank's statistics says.
The cash market was mostly unsteady, where the net purchases amounted to $187 million over the past workweek, which was 2.7 times higher than the previous week, it said. However, it dropped from $70.5 million on Monday to $55.7 million on Tuesday, and it totaled about $17 million in the last two days compared to about $15 million in the last days of September.
There were no such major fluctuations on the non-cash market, but due to the growth in demand, the net purchases there rose 1.8 times over the past week to $104.8 million, totaling about $20 million daily.
The central bank said that the increase in net purchases on the cash market was due to the growth in demand, while on the non-cash market it was due to the decline in supply.
As reported, over the past week the U.S. dollar rose in the exchange offices by only about 13 kopecks to 38.13 hryvnas/$1. This week, the Ukrainian hryvna has gained about five more kopecks.
On the non-cash market, during the week of the exchange rate regime change, the forex purchases by bank customers soared 35.3% to $1.71 billion, while the forex ales fell only 6% to $0.83 billion, the NBU said.
The volume of interbank deals increased 86.3% to $1.44 billion.
On the non-cash market, the main surge in demand was seen on October 3, the first day of the new exchange rate regime: purchases by customers reached $559 million, while interbank deals rose to $602 million, while on the last two days of the week these indicators fell to an average of $264 million and $192 million.
Simultaneously, forex sales went up to $200 million per day on Thursday and Friday from $123 million on the day of regime change and to $150 million on the other days of the week.
As reported, net sales of dollars by the NBU in the first week of October, after switching from the fixed exchange rate to the managed flexible rate on Tuesday, rose to $1,151.7 billion from $617.1 million in the last week of September and to $823.5 million - $873.1 million in the previous two weeks.
"Nearly half of the quoted volume was sold on the first day after the transition to the managed flexible rate. Thereafter, the demand gradually declined, and on Thursday and Friday, the net forex sales by the NBU were even lower than the average for the day in September, that is, before the switchover to managed flexibility of the exchange rate," NBU Governor Andrei Pyshny said.
As of Friday, the hryvnia on the interbank forex market even slightly edged up 0.1%, to 36.5827 hryvnas/$1, while since the end of July 2022 and until October 3, the National Bank has kept the official rate at 36.5686 hryvnas/$1.
"Since Wednesday, anxiety in the market has been slowly fading. We expect it to finally subside in the coming days," the NBU head said.