The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) plans to start holding auctions to buy foreign currency in the amount of up to $10 million a day from banks, the NBU said on its website.

"The sum of currency which the NBU will buy would be up to $10 million a day. In other words, the regulator could buy, for example, $5 million or $7 million depending on the sum that bidders would offer at the acceptable price," director of the open markets department at the NBU Serhiy Ponomarenko said.

Every bank will be able to participate in the auctions. They will be able to submit several bids at various exchange rates, which the NBU could satisfy, starting from the lowest exchange rate to sell foreign currency. The regulator has the right to declare the auction a failure if the bankers present unacceptable offers.

The regulator can buy foreign currency without a negative impact on the hryvnia exchange rate due to the stabilization of the currency market and the expected large inflow of currency from sales of the new harvest.

Details on the auctions will be published separately before each auction.

The NBU said that since early 2015, the central bank bought $1.5 billion on the interbank currency market.