The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) plans to buy $15 million a day to boost international reserves in the first and second quarters of 2019, the central bank has reported on its website.

"This is $5 million more compared to the quantitative indicator, which was in effect during the third and fourth quarters of 2018," the central bank said.

According to its calculations, the purchase of $15 million per day will not significantly affect the situation in the interbank market. The NBU said that in 2018, the total trading volume on the interbank foreign exchange market grew by 38%, to $ 117 billion, while the National Bank's intervention in buying and selling currency was only $5 billion, therefore the influence of the NBU on the formation of the exchange rate is minimal.

At the same time, the regulator said that, depending on the situation on the market, its intervention in the purchase of currency may be less or not occur at all. "The volume of purchases during the day may exceed the announced amount, however, these interventions will be carried out to perform other tasks stipulated by the currency interventions strategy of the National Bank for 2016-2020, in particular, to smooth out significant fluctuations in the foreign exchange market," the NBU said in the release.

The National Bank said that during the intervention it will continue minimizing its own influence on the pricing process in the foreign exchange market. Priority will be given to those forms of intervention in which the NBU does not offer, but accepts the price offered by other players of the foreign exchange market. These forms of intervention, where the National Bank acts as a "price-taker," are a currency auction and intervention at the best exchange rate.