“Criminal stupidity”: Bloomberg about the head of the National Bank of Ukraine

Kyiv, February 09 (PolitNavigator, Alexander Semenyuta) – In recent months, Ukraine has been pursuing perhaps the most incompetent monetary policy in Europe, as mercilessly noted in a publication by Bloomberg.

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“On the eve of the October parliamentary elections, President Petro Poroshenko, taking advantage of his good relationship with the head of the National Bank, Valeria Gontareva, convinced her to keep the exchange rate below 13 hryvnia per US dollar. At the end of September, banks were ordered to sell foreign currency to buyers in the amount of no more than 3 thousand hryvnia per day. At the same time, the National Bank began holding special auctions, selling banks three million dollars a day at the so-called indicative rate, which they had to adhere to when making payments to clients,” recalls the author of the article.

Further in the article, Bloomberg recalls how on February 5, Gontareva announced that there would be no more indicative auctions, allowing banks to move to a single exchange rate determined by the market. As a result, the hryvnia collapsed.

“At the last press conference, Gontareva sharply denied the suggestion that she had agreed with the IMF on an exchange rate of 25 hryvnia to the dollar. “This issue was not even considered,” she said. But at the time of writing, the dollar was worth 24,85 hryvnia,” the author of the article notes sarcastically.

The gross blunders of the Ukrainian financial authorities have worsened the already desperate economic situation in the country, the author of the publication concludes. Now the policy of Ukraine is essentially determined by the IMF, being the only reliable source of foreign currency for the country. The Fund should focus on preventing Ukrainian politicians from making stupid and self-serving decisions of the type that caused the collapse of the hryvnia and gave rise to the black market. The war in the east of the country is not the only problem for Ukraine. When this war inevitably ends, the incompetence of officials that has hampered the country's transition to a modern economy will remain.