National Bank of Ukraine to ditch calculating hryvnia-ruble exchange rates

Source: National Bank of Ukraine

Ruble no more? The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said on Wendesday it will stop calculating the official exchange rate of the Ukrainian hryvnia against the Russian ruble, along with the Belarusian ruble and the Iranian rial.

Presently, Ukraine uses two lists of currencies for calculating the official exchange rate: a daily list covering 33 currencies and a monthly list of 24. The NBU plans to merge these two lists into a single daily basket that will include the currencies from the top group of the international classifier and those used by countries with which Ukraine has at least 95% of its trade turnover.

The updated basket will feature only 44 currencies. It will not list currencies of Russia, Belarus, Algeria, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, and several other countries.

The NBU will review the list of currencies every three years  if trade volumes with the listed countries fall below 90%.

It’s important to note that since February 24, 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine outlawed any financial operations with Russian and Belarusian rubles. However, in November 2023, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada made an exception for cashless transactions involving the sale of rubles.

Earlier this year, the NBU allowed banks to temporarily conduct sales of Russian and Belarusian rubles from customer accounts, with the permission valid until the end of December 2024.