From the National Bank of Ukraine
....What kind of financing are we expecting from the IMF? What will be the outcome of the latest program review? Is it likely that the IMF will terminate Russia’s membership?
On 24 February, Russia officially unleashed a war against our country. The number one priority for us has since been to maintain the smooth and reliable operation of Ukraine’s financial system, the stable functioning of critical infrastructure, and the maximum support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And I can assure you that we are succeeding. Our second priority is to work with international financial institutions, central banks of other countries, and payment systems to ensure that they take action against Russia.
Unfortunately, this means that we are currently not prioritizing the reforms that Ukraine needs to implement in order to successfully pass the next reviews of its Stand-By Arrangement with the IMF. We will definitely resume the reforms after Ukraine has been liberated from the aggressor’s grip, but right now we have more urgent objectives to meet. This is precisely why Ukraine in March asked the IMF to close the current Stand-By Arrangement and grant our country financial aid under the Rapid Financing Instrument instead.
The Fund responded quickly and has already set in motion the allocation procedure. As a matter of fact, the IMF Executive Board will meet today to consider allocating additional financing to Ukraine as part of the RFI. We sure hope that Ukraine will receive about USD 1.4 billion or SDR 1 billion (50% of the IMF member country quota). This is the most we can get under the RFI.....
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....Why did you decide not to raise the key policy rate?
We have postponed our key policy rate decision. With Russia’s large-scale aggression raging on and with administrative restrictions in place, we no longer deem it viable to use market-driven monetary instruments such as the key policy rate, because they would currently have little to no effect on the monetary and FX markets. With this in mind, we see no point in making formal decisions. We will definitely not engage in fake monetary policy. Unlike Russia, we will not pretend that we are living under normal conditions.....
....MUCH MORE
