Today, SUP members have had a meeting with Kyrylo Shevchenko, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), and members of the NBU Board.
“We are happy that our productive dialogue with the National Bank can continue. Now, given today’s volatile situation, businesses feel the need to know the NBU’s plans for supporting the macroeconomic stability and get the idea of the 2020-2021 monetary policy. It is also crucial to understand the NBU’s further steps towards the currency liberalisation and business lending plans”, Kateryna Glazkova, SUP Executive Director, said as the meeting began.
In response, Kyrylo Shevchenko, NBU Governor, made it clear that today the country’s central bank is committed to further active communication with the business community.
He informed that the regulator plans to maintain the consistent application of the existing monetary policy, inflation targeting framework and flexible exchange-rate regime.
“Additionally, we have just recently approved a new programme to reduce bad loans. Current estimates indicate that the discount rate will remain unchanged for the rest of this year and may even decrease”, said the NBU Governor.
Kyrylo Shevchenko also noted that, at the year-end, the inflation level is estimated to reach 4.8%.
Among other things, the NBU plans include:
- Promotion of lending through the soft monetary policy and extended maturity periods applied to refinanced loans;
- Up-to-date tool to safeguard exports;
- Favourable conditions for resuming the mortgage lending operations and reducing the interest rates;
- Continued efforts of government-owned banks to handle debts as Ukraine statistically ranks the second country in world by the level of bad debts in the banking system.
Vitaliy Kovalenko, chairman of the SUP Committee for Non-Bank Financial Sector Development, emphasized that today businesses are concerned about the development and updating of the legislative and regulatory framework in compliance with the Split Law, continued currency liberalisation, simplified credit procedures for business, and new anti-money laundering requirements.
“More specifically, business has many questions regarding the AML requirements and procedures, sizeable fines, etc.”, he said.
Kateryna Rozhkova, First Deputy Governor of the NBU, noted that the Law has increased the threshold amounts subject to reporting (from UAH 400,000). Besides, the National Bank does not plan any routine checks for the entire non-bank financial sector, except for insurance companies and credit unions (where there are risks for depositors).
Yuriy Heletiy, NBU Deputy Governor, added that the regulator has further plans for the foreign exchange liberalisation, which should result in the free movement of capital. The existing restrictions will be removed gradually as the microeconomic conditions improve.
We would like to thank the Governor and members of the NBU Board for this productive meeting, as well as for their readiness to engage in dialogue and take into account suggestions offered by the business community!
