The Ukrainian Railways public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) has subscribed to the Bloomberg and Reuters information and trading terminals. According to Ukrzaliznytsia’s head Wojciech Balczun, this will help the company to monitor and analyze financial market data and enable it to improve the management of its monetary resources.
Balczun wrote on his Facebook page that Ukrzaliznytsia has over UAH 80 billion in bank accounts and performs currency operations involving hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
"The volume of Ukrzaliznytsia’s operations involving sale of US dollars averages USD 300-350 million per year. The difference between the average market exchange rates and the rates at which Ukrzaliznytsia bought or sold its currency in 2016 was about 7.5 cents per dollar. This indicator has been gradually reduced in 2017, and we are now closing operations at market average rates. This has allowed us to earn extra UAH 9.3 million on reduced margins and the additional economic effect from these operations alone will amount to about UAH 20 million by the end of the year," Balczun said.
According to him, the cash balances in Ukrzaliznytsia’s current accounts average more than UAH 5 billion. The company's board has increased the number of banks providing services to it in order to reduce the risk of losing cash, which has also allowed the company to raise the interest rates on its "temporarily free account balances."
"The economic effect of these actions amounted to UAH 59.4 million in the second quarter of 2017 alone, and the company expects it to exceed UAH 200 million before the end of the year," Balczun said.
