The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) promises to move towards further currency liberalization, avoiding individual decisions, but at the same time asks businesses to return FX earnings on time and in full and avoid fictitious import schemes, NBU governor Andriy Pyshnyy has said.

"Unreturned export earnings have almost doubled during the war. It is a problem and we need to talk about it. In the same way, we are running after schemes associated with fictitious imports, which are bleeding our gold and FX reserves," he said at a Global Outlook event in Kyiv on Wednesday, which the European Business Association traditionally holds every six months.

The governor of the NBU stated that the resource for further easing currency restrictions is objectively limited, since it is created by export earnings and international financial assistance, and at present the risk of its irregularity has already been realized.

Pyshnyy said that the National Bank is not a supporter of making individual decisions, but intends to create equal rules for all enterprises. At the same time, he again avoided indicating any specific dates or deadlines.

Asked about whether Ukraine will survive in 2024, the governor of the National Bank said that it will survive.

"Since there is no choice, we survived for almost two years in a situation when it was more difficult," Pyshnyy said.

According to him, last year we managed to agree with the IMF on a four-year program, reduce inflation five times – to 5.1% and start a cycle of reducing the key policy rate a year earlier, and this year the EU opened the four-year EUR 50 billion Ukraine Facility.

The governor of the NBU added that Ukraine had already managed to survive for two months without external assistance, although in 2022 such a scenario seemed unrealistic.

At the same time, he said that the National Bank still assumes in its baseline forecast that external assistance of $37 billion planned in the 2024 state budget will be received in full.