The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has started the second phase of reforming the banking system, and its top-priority tasks are restoring trust, improving the protection of the rights of creditors and consumers, and the development of infrastructure, NBU Governor Valeriya Gontareva has said.
“The second phase has been started – the so-called reloading of the banking system,” she said at a meeting of the parliamentary financial committee in Kyiv on July 15.
She said that the first phase of purification of the banking system is almost finished.
“The purification of the banking system has happened. I cannot say this about banks of third and fourth group, as we’re checking them thoroughly now. These are very small banks: they do not affect the banking system, as the share of 35 largest banks of our banking sector is 85 percent,” Gontareva said.
She added that the NBU has been set the task of cutting annual inflation to 12-13 percent next year.
“Our main task is to reduce the cost of resources and resume crediting of the economy,” she said.
Gontareva said that NBU has started to gradually introducing inflation targeting tools to achieve macroeconomic stability.
She said the NBU is to ensure a transfer to a transparent structure of owners at banks and identification of affiliated persons by the end of 2015 and the introduction of permanent asset quality tests.
She said that from H2 2016 the NBU plans to switch to the third phase of reforming the banking system – the stable development of the system.
In the long-term outlook – in four years – the NBU plans to boost reserves to $38.5 billion under the Extended Facility Program (EFF) sticking to the policy of flexible exchange rate, Gontareva said.
Among other goals is achieving inflation of 5 percent by 2020 and average credit rates of 10 percent, the reduction of cash share to 10 percent and growth of the share of the national electronic payment system to 30 percent.
Gontareva said that all regulators of the financial market and the parliament should work jointly to implement the program and achieve these goals.
