Measures taken by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) should produce a fall in credit rates in Ukraine in 2012, according to the director of the chief department for monetary and credit policy at the NBU, Olena Scherbakova.
"A trend of falling credit rates will be seen. The NBU and banks are trying to achieve this and working on this… This will be a trend as we gave a signal to the market," she said at a roundtable on Tuesday.
She said that the application of quantitative easing in Ukraine is no longer appropriate: in contrast to the United States and united Europe, the application of such monetary approaches in Ukraine could affect inflation and the exchange rate pace.
"Quantitative easing could be used by developed economies… Our goal for this year is [to carry out] a stabilizing and reserved policy," she said.
"Our main goal is price stability," she added.
This year the NBU twice reduced refinancing overnight rates along with a fall in inflation risks: two times the rates were cut by 0.25 percentage notches, reaching 8.75% for loans secured by government securities and 10.75% for unsecured loans.
The amount of liquidity support of banks via refinancing mechanisms was increased during the past several months.
Some funds of obligatory reserves were sent from a separate account at the NBU to correspondent accounts of banks and the possible terms of direct REPO transactions were expanded.
