The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) announced a decrease in its foreign exchange reserves as of April 2024, which was due to a reduction in international aid and significant costs to support the hryvnia. According to the official report of the National Bank of Ukraine, the total amount of gold and foreign exchange reserves decreased by 3.1% to $42.4 billion. In addition, net foreign reserves (NRF) fell by 4.1%, from $31.8 billion to $30.5 billion.
This is stated in the official report of the NBU.
Net foreign exchange reserves are the total foreign exchange reserves minus the liabilities (current debt on loans with interest) of Ukraine to the IMF.
Currently, these obligations amount to $11.9 billion, and this amount is inviolable in the National Treasury - the government cannot freely spend it on other needs of the country, only on payments to the International Monetary Fund, which does not carry out any restructuring or deferrals to Ukraine even during the war from payments of previously granted loans.
The April reduction of the National Bank's total currency reserves returned the regulator to the trend of the beginning of 2024. In January, they decreased by 4.9% (to $38.5 billion), in February – by 3.8% (to $37.1 billion), and only in March there was a sharp increase in foreign exchange by 18%, and primarily due to the large credit a tranche from the European Union (almost $5 billion), the World Bank ($1.6 billion), Canada ($1.5 billion) and the IMF ($880.7 million) - a total of $9.3 billion was received then.
However, in April, the flow of international aid to Ukraine decreased to $1.6 billion: we received only $1.6 billion from the European Union (as part of the Ukraine Facility program) and a little more - $46.6 million - the authorities were able to attract on the domestic debt market thanks to the placement of currency OVDP (domestic state loan bonds). However, the NBU was forced to spend $2.3 billion to maintain the stability of the hryvnia at the interbank level, as well as $884.5 million was paid for public debt - in particular, to the EU, the World Bank, and the IMF.
Therefore, as a result, a decrease in the total currency reserve of the National Bank was recorded.
As before, most of the NBU's reserves are invested in securities - 69.9% of the total volume ($29.6 billion), and only 4.8% ($2.02 billion) in gold. And the currency structure was dominated by the American dollar (82.9%), followed by the euro - 9.6%, gold (4.8%), the Chinese yuan (1.2%), the British pound (0.7%) and Japanese yen (0.7%).
