The head of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeriya Gontareva told what you have accomplished while in office.
“When in 2014, I came to the national Bank, the state of the economy and the banking system was terrible. Huge macroeconomic imbalances, the exchange rate of the hryvnia pegged to the dollar, and substantial fiscal dominance, a sick banking system, very poor banking supervision, high level of lending to connected persons and non-transparent ownership structure, inefficient procedures of combating money laundering. 20 years on, these problems have closed the eyes of politicians, Ministers and heads of the Central Bank. The country itself was in a very difficult economic situation. At the same time joined the three crises: macroeconomic, monetary, and banking. While the country was at war. Together with the territories we lost almost 20% of our GDP and 30% of our foreign exchange earnings. Our economy is predicted to collapse, and the country predicted the collapse. My colleagues and well-known financial guru told me that this mission is impossible”, – said Gontareva.
At the same time, according to her, the national Bank took responsibility and engaged in reforms.
“All the decisions taken by the national Bank aimed to stabilize the Ukrainian financial system, to stop the lawlessness in the banking system to lay the Foundation for building a healthy banking sector in the future. In almost three years of my work as the head of the national Bank we managed to do all this”, – said Gontareva.
The head of the NBU transferred the main achievements of his team:
- Macro-financial stability
“To do this, first we moved to flexible exchange rate regime. The desire of politicians for their own interests to keep the hryvnia exchange rate at any cost had a negative impact on all of our macroeconomic indicators. And we finally got rid of the anchors that were dragging us down. Now moderate exchange rate fluctuations are no longer perceived as the end of the world and not provoke panic”, – said Gontareva.
- New monetary policy
“In 2016, after two years of crisis management we fully rebooted and created a new effective monetary policy – a policy of inflation targeting. The other alternative today for our country simply does not exist. The mandate of the national Bank is to ensure price stability in the state. Last year, the first national Bank assumed the commitment to achieve the inflation target and fulfilled. We have reached our first goal: 12% established by the national Bank under inflation targeting regime”, – said the head of the NBU.
- Slowing inflation
“The goal of the Central Bank defined. This year we plan to achieve a definite level of inflation and to keep it in low range. This is all reinforced by the decision of the Board and the management Board of the national Bank. Medium-term our goal is 5%. I’m sure it would be achievable in 2019,” predicts Gontareva.
- Reform of the NBU
“Now the national Bank is not a policy of one person. We have built a national Bank, based on our mission,” – said Gontareva.
Also concurrently with the systemic changes in the market, the national Bank reformed, and its own Supervisory function. “We have radically changed approaches to the monitoring of banks, our methodology and the evaluation system. … From next year diagnostics for banks will become an annual event and the results will be published in free access”, – said Gontareva.
- Reform of the banking sector
“We started with large-scale diagnosis of the banking system, which included the asset quality review and stress tests of banks. The results of this diagnosis, we finally learned about the real state of Affairs in the banking system. … From the beginning the programme was quite a compromise. Banks that are unable to run this program, it was withdrawn from the market and deemed insolvent. At present, banks have already increased their capital by 108 billion. This is a significant step toward their financial stability in the future, and therefore to restore confidence in the banks. At the same time, the national Bank began a cleansing of the banking system from the circuit of the banks, sinks – those who are not engaged in the banking business. Out of 180 banks at the beginning of 2014 now in the market there are 91 Bank”, – said Gontareva.
Thus, according to her, a complete cleansing of the banking system would be impossible without solving the problem of PrivatBank. “The move by the Bank under state control was the only correct decision in the conditions when the fault in the Bank’s equity amounted to 146 billion UAH”, – said Gontareva.
We will remind, today, Gontareva also noted that are ready to provide a detailed report on its activities in Parliament whenever the Parliament time.
As you know, today, April 10, Gontareva has officially announced his resignation. The statement of Gontareva must be signed by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, after which it will be considered by the Verkhovna Rada.
Resign Gontareva is may 10, notifying, according to the rules for a month. However, if the Verkhovna Rada voted for the dismissal of the NBU Governor earlier, Gontareva leaves post according to the decision of Parliament.
