The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) believes that the most painful currency restriction is a ban on payment of dividends imposed in September 2014, and this should be first to be revoked, NBU Governor Valeriya Gontareva has said.

"Now we think to permit payment of dividends for 2014 after current dividends for 2015 and then those accumulated for the previous periods," she said in an interview with Novoye Vremia magazine published on Friday.

"However, we’d like that these dividends were reinvested in our country," she added.

Gontareva said that there were examples when after imposing the restriction on payment of dividends, large sums of dividends were accumulated at accounts of MTS and Kyivstar mobile communications operators and they bought 3G communications licenses for them.

In general, she said that stabilization of the economic and political situation in the country should be the preconditions for the gradual liberalization of the currency market.