The surplus of the National Bank of Ukraine's (NBU) interventions in March totaled $152 million, which enabled it to increase international reserves and improve the payment system, the head of the group of advisors to the National Bank of Ukraine governor, Valeriy Lytvytsky, said.
"We consider our payment position more secure. We started the year with foreign reserves of more than $31 billion and ended the first quarter with the reserves exceeding $31 billion, although pessimistic forecasts prevailed among the experts," he told Interfax-Ukraine on March 30.
He noted that in February the NBU reduced the balance of interventions by eight times, to slightly over $100 million, and in March it again started buying foreign currency, which allowed by the end of the quarter to have the reserves of $31.2 billion.
Lytvytsky noted that in February the balance of payments was equal to zero: direct investment doubled, and the growth in borrowings showed that the debt markets are not closed to Ukraine.
He added that exports have been growing faster than imports lately. According to him, in February, for the first time in many months, a devaluation of the real effective exchange rate was seen, which amounted to 3.5%, which was a good protection for exports.
The advisor said the completion of the first quarter give the impression that the Ukrainian economy is successfully overcoming the mild anemia of the first two months, which was aggravated by the extreme weather.
"All of our monetary aggregates in March moved more rapidly than in February: the monetary base and the money stock. The lending to the real sector started growing more actively, and the dynamics of increasing individuals’ and legal entities’ deposits has overtaken the level of the corresponding period last year," Lytvytsky said, noting once more the importance of maintaining low inflationary pressure and preventing significant currency exchange rate fluctuations.
