Foreign entities with investments in Ukraine took $1.8 billion worth of dividends out of the country in 2017. Deputy Head of the National Bank of Ukraine Oleh Churiy said this on air during an interview with “Radio Vesti”.
“According to our statistics the amount of dividends repatriated reached $1.8 billion. It is slightly higher than we expected. It may be caused by the fact that at the end of the year we allowed to repatriate the dividends made before 2014. Corporations probably started to take dividends out more actively. However, we do not see any problem in the fact that the volume of repatriated dividends turned out to be greater than initially expected”, he said.
Oleh Churiy also announced that in the nearest future the National Bank of Ukraine will send out requests to domestic banks in order to figure out whether their clients would like to repatriate dividends made in 2017.
“Our procedure requires us to evaluate the likely volume of foreign currency outflow and its influence on the currency market and the exchange rate. Foreign currency outflow consists of foreign currency purchase and repatriation of dividends abroad. This is why in the nearest future we are going to send out requests to Ukrainian banks to see if their clients are willing to repatriate dividends from 2017. Once we gather this information from banks, it will be analyzed, and liberalization will be carried out based on that analysis”, – Churiy explained.
