N e w s

The gross gold and currency reserves of the National Bank of Ukraine(NBU) have decreased by $9 million for the period from the 28th of February to the 6th of March 2000 accordingly from $1,153 billion to $1,144 billion. It was declared by Mr. Sergey Yaremenko, the director of the currency control department at NBU. According to Sergey Yaremenko, the decrease in reserves is related to the insignificant foreign payments made last week. At same time he said that there has been a positive saldo from the operations in the currency market, which means that NBU purchased more currency than it sold. For the period of January-February the difference between the purchase and sale totaled $162 million.