The council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) will request a reduction in lending rates through lowering its refinancing rate thus creating the conditions for refinancing, the Chairman of Petro Poroshenko told the Verkhovna Rada on Wednesday in a presentation on monetary policy for 2010.
Poroshenko said that the NBU’s council decided to recommend the
bank’s board to continue reducing the discount rate, which has already
been reduced to 10.25%, and bring it closer to the refinancing rate,
which comes to 16% today.
“We insist that with inflation decreasing that lending rates need to
be lowered. Before October 20, I will gather the council again in order
for us to receive information about the rate decrease and the formation
of transparent terms to access refinancing,” Poroshenko said.
“The process is not complete and there are grounds to lower [the
discount rate] further. The refinancing rate should be tied to the
discount rate. It should not be higher than one or two percentage
points,” Poroshenko said.
