Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed into law the bill on currency and currency transactions.

"Today we have already completed all the necessary procedures, and today I want to congratulate you, now, in this hall," Poroshenko said, after signing the currency bill into law at a meeting with business representatives in Kyiv on Wednesday.

He noted that the adoption of this law is "joint concerted work, no matter how much those in the Verkhovna Rada and outside it offered resistance, no matter how anyone tried to use blackmail so as to interfere with the effective functioning of the law on currency and currency transactions. We have done it."

On June 21, 2018, the Verkhovna Rada adopted at second reading and as a whole the bill on currency and currency transactions.

The document will speed up currency liberalization and suggests a conceptually new approach to the system of currency regulation and supervision - "everything that is not directly prohibited is permitted." It is intended to become a single legislative act that determines the order of the organization of currency regulation and the implementation of currency supervision in the country. At present, the major normative legal act regulating the currency market is a 1993 decree of the Cabinet of Ministers on the system of currency regulation and currency control.

During the discussion of the bill in parliament, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Yakiv Smolii said that the NBU would gradually remove currency restrictions.

"Currency restrictions will be gradually lifted. After all, business and the public will be able to decide on their own when to conduct currency transactions, and how. This will not happen in one day. We will remove restrictions gradually and carefully so as not to shake financial stability. The adoption of the bill on currency gives the green light to cancel the most painful restrictions immediately after its entry into force, for example, regarding investment abroad and foreign economic operations," he said.

The adoption of the currency bill was welcomed by the European Business Association (EBA). According to its experts, the document abolishes outdated regulations, sanctions for violations of currency legislation, currency control of transactions up to UAH 150,000, deadlines for settlements on foreign economic operations in 180 days. At the same time, full-fledged currency liberalization and the free movement of capital in accordance with the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement are being introduced.

Poroshenko said at the Ukrainian-Serbian business forum in Belgrade on July 3 that he would sign the currency bill into law on July 4.

Earlier on Wednesday, July 4, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy signed the bill on currency and currency transactions and handed over the document for signature to the president.