NBU cuts off Crimea from Ukraine, – Kyiv media
Simferopol, November 5 (PolitNavigator, Evgeny Andreev) – As of November 05, the National Bank has limited opportunities for economic cooperation between residents and businesses in mainland Ukraine and residents and businesses in Crimea, writes the Kyiv publication Kapital.
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The regulator equated Crimeans, as well as companies on the peninsula, with non-residents. According to Resolution No. 699, adopted on November 3, banking transactions with persons registered on the peninsula will be regarded as transactions with non-residents, and investment transactions as transactions with foreign investors. And agreements concluded between legal entities of Crimea and companies registered or residing in Ukraine will be considered foreign economic ones.
The NBU press service explained that this decree was issued to consolidate the norms of the law on the creation of the free economic zone "Crimea".
In practice, this means that payments under such agreements will now be possible in rubles.
As Jurimex lawyer Tatiana Prichepa explained to Capital, until now, transactions with Crimean companies were considered intra-Ukrainian, which means that payments for them had to be made in hryvnia. As a result, payments between the company located in Ukraine and the Crimean structure were carried out through accounts opened in Russian banks. The NBU has corrected this situation. Now Ukrainian companies will be able to make payments with Crimean ones in rubles.
True, this innovation also has a downside - having become foreign economic, all transactions between Ukrainian and Crimean companies are subject to currency control. This means, the expert emphasizes, that Ukrainian structures will have to submit an application to banks to purchase currency. Financial institutions will transfer to a special account the amount of funds in hryvnias, which will be sufficient to purchase the planned volume of rubles, and purchase rubles in the “T + 2” mode. And in the event of receiving a ruble payment from a Crimean company, the Ukrainian partner will be required to sell the funds received. In addition, export-import transactions between Ukrainian and Crimean objects will be subject to the following standard: settlement period up to 90 days.
If the Ukrainian parent company wants to transfer funds to its Crimean subsidiary, for example, to replenish the authorized capital, as a loan or non-repayable financial assistance, this will be regarded as an investment. And by Resolution No. 699, the NBU prohibited investments by residents in objects of investment activity located (registered) in the territory of Crimea. Thus, according to Prichepa, the parent company will have to each time request permission from the NBU to transfer funds to its “daughter” on the peninsula.
All this is aimed at depriving Ukrainian businesses, which are unlikely to want to undergo such currency controls, of the desire to resume operations with Crimea, the expert believes
The NBU is cutting Crimea off from Ukraine, according to Kyiv media.