Conditions are in place for low inflation until the end of this year and there are grounds to expect that inflation in 2014 will be moderate, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Ihor Sorkin said.

"There are the conditions present for retaining [inflation] at a low level until the end of this year, [as there was] a good harvest of vegetables, fruit and grain, [and] a medium pace of growth in consumer demand," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"According to our estimates, in 2014, inflation will be also moderate and will not exceed the medium-term target defined in the key principles of the monetary and credit policy," he added.

As reported, in January-September 2013 deflation in Ukraine was 0.2%, while in October 2013 growth in consumer prices was 0.4%.

According to the key principles of the monetary and credit policy for 2013, the annual indicator of consumer inflation in 2013-2014 should stabilize in the range of 4-6%, while starting from 2015 it will be 3-5%.

Sorkin said that inflation in October is linked to the seasonal factors and it does not threaten price stability.

"We are constantly analyzing the macroeconomic and monetary indicators, including for the purpose of perhaps changing the discount rate," he said.

"This is a certain potential for further supporting economic growth using monetary methods without prejudicing the stability of the national currency, but the final decision on the rates of the central bank will be made by the NBU Board."

He said that NBU this year twice cut the discount rate, bringing it to the lowest level since Ukraine gained impendence (6.5%).

He said that banks have enough resources for active crediting of the economy: thanks to the support of NBU, liquidity was one third higher than last year.

In addition, in 2013, the level of interest rates on the interbank market remains low, at 3-4%, compared with 10-11% year-over-year.

Sorkin said that the central bank does not see a threat to the appearance of credit misbalances.

"We learned certain lessons from the crisis: banks started being more careful in making decisions on crediting, and supervision over banks has been strengthened, including in the consumer crediting area. We don’t expect that there will be credit misbalances neither today nor in the future."

He said that consumer credits issued to individuals have grown by UAH 11 billion since early 2013, although this is only one fifth of the total growth in the credit portfolio: the pace of growth in crediting of companies is considerably higher than crediting of the public (8% against 3.5%).

"We're satisfied that today Ukrainians receive credits only in hryvnias. This considerably cuts risks of borrowers. Since the start of 2009, the volume of consumer crediting in the national currency expanded by UAH 36 billion. Over the period consumer credits in foreign currency worth UAH 91 billion were repaid."

He also said that in January-October 2013 the total volume of credits to business and the public grew by UAH 56 billion or 7.2%, according to banks' balance sheets. The major part of credits is sent to the real economic sector – 76% of credit transactions of banks: the average rates for credits in hryvnias issued to companies fell by 2.4 percentage notches since early 2013, to 14.3%.

The realization of the government secured crediting program was started: state banks started financing a project on the construction of Dnistrovska hydroelectric pumped storage power plant and preliminary decided on crediting over 30 projects.

Sorkin also said that in the middle of October the new infrastructure of the stock market started functioning, and this was a result of the successful reform of the depository system of Ukraine.

"I would not narrow down the problem of searching for resources to finance the economic development to only crediting issues. The main volume of long-term financial resources in the developed countries is accumulated on the stock market. That's why the NBU pays a lot of attention to the issues of the promotion of the development of the stock market.

"We see a lot of potential for accumulating financial resources and cutting their cost in the further development of the stock market," he said.