On June 3rd the National Bank of Ukraine (hereinafter - the "NBU") issued two resolutions, which both excited and frustrated the financial market of Ukraine. We are talking about the Resolution No.354, which relates to regulation of the monetary and foreign exchange market of Ukraine, and the Resolution No.355, which amends the procedure for transfer of funds in national and foreign currency to non-residents for certain transactions.
In fact, the NBU Resolution No.354 extends the existing regime of currency restrictions for another three months. Thus, all difficulties existing with regard to currency transactions in connection with the stabilization measures taken by the regulator preserve till September 3, 2015. More detailed information on such currency restrictions can be accessed in our previous newsletter.
Yet certain provisions of the issued Resolutions appear the first liberalization actions from the NBU. At the first place it goes about the following:
(A) Threshold for cash withdrawal in national currency via the cash desks and ATMs per day per customer is twice increased. Now it is UAH 300,000.00. As before, the limitation does not apply to (i) corporate travel expenses, salaries, pensions, student scholarships and other social and related payments; (ii) compensation of funds by the Deposit Guarantee Fund to Individual Depositors within liquidation procedure of insolvent banks.
(B) Limitation for foreign currency purchase upon legal entities’ requests with regard to performance of their foreign currency obligations is now decreased. Particularly, there has been set a higher threshold for amount of legal entities’ own funds available at their deposit or current accounts in foreign currency, above which certain difficulties with the purchase of foreign currency are applicable. Previously, given the amount of such funds exceeded the equivalent of USD 10,000.00, with a few exceptions, the legal entity was obliged to fulfil obligations solely at the expense of its own foreign currency funds available at its bank accounts. Now, such threshold equals to USD 25,000.00.
(C) Price threshold for value of imported services, works and intellectual property rights, which implies the necessity to obtain price examination certificate from the State Monitoring Center for External Commodity Markets is now increased. As of now, such threshold equals to EUR 50,000.00.
Notwithstanding those liberalization steps, many currency restrictions remain in force, thus currency transactions require careful consideration at the very first stage of entering into trade and investment deals. Our pleasure to draw your attention to sharp angles of Ukrainian currency regulation in more details and in relation to specifics of your activity as well as to advice on legal solutions applicable to your business upon individual request.