NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyy’s Speech at Press Briefing on First Month as Head of NBU

Dear colleagues,

I hope that you are safe and that we can work today. This is my first official press briefing as Governor. I am going to talk about monetary policy as well as the whole range of issues I am in charge of.

I have deliberately taken a month-long break to prepare for my first communication with journalists and to be able to give specific answers to questions concerning my priorities and the NBU’s current operating conditions, rather than simply make generalized statements. I am here to take your questions about what the NBU intends to work on going forward, what decisions will be made, and what decisions have already been made.

This has been a rather active month, during which I had a chance to appreciate the NBU team’s high professional level. Events that are important for the NBU have taken place over the past month, events directly related to monetary policy decision-making. Those included a discussion by the members of the Monetary Policy Committee, the NBU Board’s decision on the key policy rate and the relevant press briefing, where actual monetary policy decisions were announced, not just plans and expectations.

The second main priority during this period has been our interaction with the IMF. The main discussions have taken place and work has already begun within the framework of the IMF’s Ukraine Mission, which operated out of Vienna. While there, the NBU team and the Ministry of Finance specialists worked with our IMF partners, looking for common ground and providing simple answers to quite complex questions. Hopefully, the NBU and the MoF were able to present their consolidated position on monetary and fiscal policy to our IMF partners. A new stage of the talks is starting in less than a week, when the second IMF Mission to Ukraine is scheduled to commence. The new Mission will pick up where the previous one left off.

In addition, the first organizational and personnel changes have occurred over the past month. Dmytro Oliinyk, the NBU’s sixth Deputy Governor, has come as a welcome addition to the NBU Board. A chain-of-command overhaul has also taken place: the central bank’s organizational structure has been rebuilt around a slightly different logic, and a new line of reporting – Financial Stability – has been established. I hope that we will have enough time to talk about all of this today.