Ukraine central bank considers relaxing compulsory foreign currency sale

Макроэкономика 13.10.2015 The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) is considering relaxing its compulsory foreign currency sale regulations among its priorities in a broader campaign to lift foreign currency restrictions on the market, said on Oct. 12 Oleh Churii, the deputy NBU head, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. He didn’t mention the timing. Another priority is making dividend repayments abroad, he said. Restrictions that aren’t priorities include the 90-day term requiring the return to Ukraine of foreign currency revenue earned abroad, he said. “Exports from Ukraine predominantly are commodities with low value added,” Churii said. “It’s not exports of sophisticated machinery that require long periods for the return of foreign currency proceeds.” The compulsory sale of 50% of foreign currency earned abroad was introduced in November 2012. That level was increased to 100% in August 2014 and later reduced to 75% in September 2014. Alexander Paraschiy: Reducing the level of compulsory foreign currency sale to 50% (from 75%) of export proceeds has been discussed since the end of 2014. The currency shock in February apparently delayed potential easing, yet ForEx stability in the last six months stimulated officials to return to this idea. Still, the NBU will have to get the IMF’s permission for such a move, we beleive. Since the IMF is quite conservative on foreign currency regulations, we do not expect significant progress in this direction in the nearest future. We expect its main criterion to approve relaxing will be the successful accumulation of gross international reserves in 2015. The IMF target for gross international reserves is USD 18.3 bln for 2015. We project USD 16.9 bln in gross international reserves by the year end.