Many Ukrainians bought hryvnia earlier this month from the rate of 9 hryvnia per zloty, or in other words they paid 11 grosze for one hryvnia.
It was a good offer back then, because few bureaux de change (Kantor in Polish) bought Ukrainian currency at all. Therefore bureau de change managed to focus a lot of hryvnia, now they can earn a lot of money on it. PKO BP pays PLN 0.14 in agreement with the National Bank of Poland, which is a rounding down of PLN 14.67 of the official hryvnia exchange rate at theNational Bank of Poland.
Long queues of Ukrainians
On Friday, long queues of Ukrainians who want to exchange their currency have formed in front of the PKO BP branches. To do this, they must present a Ukrainian identity card issued after 2016 in a plastic version – an internal passport or a Ukrainian foreign passport. You can exchange up to 10000 hryvnia for one person.
Bureaux de change (Kantor in Polish), which bought the currency at a lower exchange rate, to sell it now at PKO BP, would have to be found under the branches of Ukrainian intermediaries.
How much can the Ukrainian hryvnia really be worth? In the era of war, its outcome is uncertain and the scale of damage caused by Russia, probably not much, but in order to help the Ukrainians who fled to Poland, the National Bank of Poland decided to provide support.
Will be sold to the National Bank of Poland
All hryvnia purchased by PKO Bank Polski will be sold to the National Bank of Poland, which will sell them to the National Bank of Ukraine after the purchase is completed.
Both PKO Bank Polski and the National Bank of Poland use the same exchange rate, which means that none of the banks mentioned above makes money by converting hryvnia to zlotys In order to facilitate the service of a large number of people, the hryvnia exchange rate is rounded to the nearest grosze .
The list of facilities where from Friday you can exchange hryvnia for Polish zlotys can be found at this link or in the Ukrainian language version here .
Source: BusinessInsider
