Business news from Ukraine

Volumes of currency purchase by Ukrainian population in January 2023 exceeded volumes of its sale by $564 million as compared to $463.2 million in December last year, this figure is growing for the sixth month in a row, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said.
According to its website, if earlier the “net” purchase was formed mainly in the cash market, in December – almost equally in the cash and non-cash markets, in January it is already mainly in the cash market.
At the end of September last year, the National Bank raised the limit on the purchase of non-cash currency by physical persons from 50 thousand UAH to 100 thousand UAH a month, under its placement on deposit for at least three months, which stimulates such operations: in January, non-cash currency purchases rose to $ 523.9 million from $ 450.5 million in December, $362.2 million – in November.
The sales of non-cash hard currency, by contrast, decreased to $153.4 million from $220.2 million in December and $211.1 million in November.
As for cash currency, its purchase and sale decreased compared to December: purchase – from $1.425 billion to $1.268 billion, while sale – from $1.191 billion to $1.075 billion.
According to these data of the NBU, the turnover of the official foreign currency cash market in January this year amounted to 71.9% of the turnover in pre-war January 2022, while non-cash currency transactions – 60.6%.
As reported, the population bought $880.1 million more currency than sold, including $1010.0 million more cash currency bought than sold, according to official statistics, for 2022 as a whole.
At the moment, the dollar exchange rate in the cash market is about 39.9 UAH/$1, while the National Bank set the official rate from July 21, 2022, at 36.5686 UAH/$1. The dollar is quoted at about 0.6 hryvnia cheaper than a month ago.