The Association of Ukrainian Banks (AUB) believes that the rush demand of the population for cash foreign currency was provoked by the latest decisions of the Cabinet of Ministers, in particular, the sharp increase in pensions and social payments. This was stated at today's press conference by the president of the AUB, Oleksandr Suhoniako.\n\n"When people have money, they try to save it in dollars. And then a rush arises, which the NBU is now trying to bring down. These are the consequences of the government's policy," he said.\n\nSuhoniako assessed as unfounded the government's accusations against the National Bank and commercial banks of creating such a situation. "You shouldn't shift [the blame] from a sick head to a healthy one," he said.\n\nThe AUB president added that the active sale of dollars from the National Bank's reserves to cover the currency deficit is not an optimal solution for unblocking the situation. "300 million dollars (sold by the National Bank from reserves) is too high a price to please some people in the government," he said.\n\nRecall that at the end of September the NBU stated that it considers the growth of the dollar exchange rate on the cash currency market to be seasonal and forecasts its decline. At that time the National Bank also decided to sell up to 50-100 million dollars daily on the interbank market in cash to saturate the cash currency market and lower the dollar exchange rate (the corresponding resolution took effect on October 15). Simultaneously, the NBU introduced a 2% limit on the deviation of the cash currency buy-sell rate from the official one. According to the Central Bank, over the past two weeks it brought 300 million cash dollars into Ukraine, more than half of which it has already sold to banks at 5.3150 UAH/USD. At the same time, during non-cash interventions in the period from October 18, the National Bank sold banks more than 266 million non-cash dollars.\n\nBased on "Ukrainian News" materials