Panic moods of Ukrainians subside on currency market
“The authorities are likely to continue enjoying very favorable conditions on external credit markets and will place Eurobonds to refinance the upcoming payments”
KYIV, Mar 15, 2013 (UBO) – The state of the NBU gold and currency reserves at the end of February shows low demand for the currency, especially among the population. This suggests that panic-driven moods of Ukrainians, caused by the autumn parliamentary elections, subsided. And demand for foreign cash will not grow. Olena Bilan, chief economist of the investment company Dragon Capital expressed such an opinion.
“A balance of foreign exchange interventions in February was lower than expected (USD 0.3-0.4 billion), in this case, as in January, the regulator did not sell the U.S. dollars, but only the euros. Insignificant volumes of foreign currency purchases in the past month show that devaluation expectations of the population are still low,” the rbc.ua quoted the expert.
Bilan said that in the short term, the population moods as regards the hryvnia will hardly really change, and demand for cash is likely to remain weak. Like most experts, the Dragon Capital economist believes that considerable payments on external debt (about USD 3 billion) coming in Q2 this year, could not shake the national currency positions.
“The authorities are likely to continue enjoying very favorable conditions on external credit markets and will place Eurobonds to refinance the upcoming payments,” Bilan said.
To remind, according to the NBU, its interventions on the foreign exchange market at the end of February appeared to be very low - just slightly over USD 223 million, while at the end of the last year they made up billions.