National Bank of Ukraine's net forex interventions rise 31.7% last week

MOSCOW. Aug 11 (Interfax) - The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) bought only $0.5 million last week, while increasing the sale of dollars on the interbank market by $203 million, or 31.7%, to $842.6 million, Ukrainian media reported, citing the statistics published on the regulator's website.

According to the NBU's data, over the past week, the negative balance of foreign currency purchases and sales by bank customers - legal entities went up from $72.4 million on Monday to $207.4 million on Thursday.

A similar situation was observed on the market of currency exchange transactions carried out by the population. If between Saturday and Monday, the forex sale exceeded its purchase by $0.5 million, then on Thursday by $27.7 million.

If in previous weeks such a negative balance was formed exclusively on the cash market, then last week it was also recorded in the segment of non-cash transactions, as the population bought more non-cash currency than sold it, while on Thursday, this difference exceeded $ 10 million.

At the same time, the official exchange rate of the hryvnia against the dollar last week strengthened from 41.7644 UAH/$1 to 41.3895 UAH/$1.

The same dynamics were observed on the cash market, where the hryvnia rose by more than 15 kopecks over the past week to around 41.40 UAH/$1 for purchase, and to around 41.50 UAH/$1 for sale.