Ukraine’s former economy minister Tymofiy Mylovanov has been appointed as a “non-staff” adviser to Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff.
The president’s office reported the news on Nov. 22, but Mylovanov says he had already been advising Yermak for some time.
“You all know the challenges facing the state: COVID-19, budget financing, relations with international financial organizations. I hope that my knowledge will be useful to Ukraine’s top leadership,” Mylovanov said in a Facebook post on Nov. 21.
Mylovanov’s new position will not be paid. While advising Yermak, the ex-official will continue to serve as the president of the Kyiv School of Economics, Ukraine’s leading business school. He is also a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and has worked in several European and American universities.
Mylovanov headed the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture in the 2019-2020 government of Oleksiy Honcharuk.
Honcharuk’s cabinet was appointed by Zelensky and approved in August 2019 by the parliament dominated by the president’s Servant of the People party. Honcharuk’s government made and implemented a number of reform-oriented decisions. But the same parliament dismissed it along with Mylovanov in March 2020 after Zelensky expressed displeasure with the slow speed of its reforms and accused the cabinet of being out of touch with the rest of the country.
Since then, Mylovanov has repeatedly commented on Ukraine’s economic situation and criticized the policies of the new government.
Most recently, Mylovanov said that Ukraine’s economic situation is “critical.” He suggested that the government should print more money and help the business if it chooses to impose another COVID-19 lockdown. A hard lockdown for two to four weeks would be more effective than the current weekend lockdown, according to Mylovanov.
“Now, we should close businesses and provide them with financing. But we don’t have enough funding now. So in essence, we need to print money,” Mylovanov said on Svoboda Slova political talk show on Nov. 9.
Before his appointment as an economy minister, Mylovanov was elected by the parliament to the National Bank of Ukraine Council in 2016, where he had been the deputy chairman until 2019.
Mylovanov has a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in economics from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
