Individuals to no longer be required to produce passport to buy foreign cash

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has, by his presidential edict, abolished the requirement for banks to sell cash and non-cash foreign currency to individuals for Belarusian rubels only on production of a passport.

The edict, which will come into force on the date of its official publication, is aimed at liberalizing currency exchange rules, said the presidential press office.

The requirement was established by a presidential edict on November 11, 2011. Such a requirement was also in effect in Belarus from 1997 until February 2006.

“The edict was issued within the framework of a set of measures developed by the government and the National Bank of Belarus for achieving a single equilibrium exchange rate of the Belarusian rubel,” the presidential press office said in 2011. “The recording of the passport data of individuals [purchasing foreign currency] will make it possible to create an inter-bank centralized electronic database of foreign-currency sales to individuals with the help of a single automated information system.”

In 2011, the U.S. dollar rose by 176 percent against the Belarusian rubel in the cash exchange market.