The decrease of the hryvnia exchange rate in the past several days is caused by fundamental factors: the worsening of the state of the country's balance of payment due to the unfavorable situation on the global commodities market, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeriya Gontareva said at a meeting of the profile parliamentary committee in Kyiv on Wednesday.

"The seasonal factors are left behind. However, the fundamental factors are out of the scope of the NBU's influence. The NBU cannot resist the impact of the fundamental factors," she said.

She said that more than one week the market finds the balance without the NBU's interference.

Gontareva said that when the seasonal factors were seen in January, the NBU entered the market five times and sold $118 million, supporting the exchange rate.

The seasonal factors are winter holidays that cut currency inflow to the country by 38% and its sales volumes by 32% and increase demand of banks on currency due to a large number of tourists who travel abroad, she said.

Gontareva said another similar factor was extra liquidity related to the peak payment of over UAH 30 billion from the treasury account in late December, including payment of VAT refunding debt. This resulted in additional demand on foreign currency, even from exporters.

Commenting on fundamental factors, the NBU head said that the main factor is worsening of the balance of payment due to a decline of global prices on commodity markets and the larger devaluation of currencies of the countries that are trade partners of Ukraine.

"Devluation of currencies of trade partners offsets competitive advantages of the Ukrainian hryvnia," she said.

She added that new restrictions imposed by Russia from January 1, 2016 in the form of embargo on supplies of agricultural products and food, the revoking of the free trade area and complication of transit also affected Ukraine's balance of payment by $1.1 billion a year.

According to the NBU, global prices of wheat in January 2016 were 25% lower than last year prices, as for steel – 31% lower and iron ore – 38% lower. She said that the U.S. dollar to the Kazakh tenge grew by 97% in a year, to the Belarusian ruble – by 92% and the Russian ruble – by 28%.

"Unfortunately, from the balanced current account of last year we are switching to the unbalanced one this year. The deeper diving of prices of commodities could result in the larger deficit of the balance of payment than we predict now," Gontareva said, adding that the NBU anticipates that the deficit of the current account in 2016 will expand to $2.5 billion or 3% of GDP from $200 million in 2015.

She also said that the public still painfully reacts to the switch to the flexible exchange rate formation, asking the politicians not to speculate with the hryvnia topic not to provoke additional demand.

"One should not take the fluctuations of the hryvnia exchange rate in the past months as something extraordinary: the fluctuations of the exchange rate are part of the flexible price formation regime. One should not panic, but understand why it is happening this way," she said.

Gontareva said that negative fundamental factors could be partially compensated by lower global prices of energy, as it is a large part of the Ukrainian imports, as well as by privatization.

"The important task is privatization this year: we hope to obtain over $1 billion," she said.

She also said that Ukraine is under umbrella of assistance from international financial institutions (IFIs) which financing must cover the current account and allow boosting Ukraine's forex reserves in 2016 from $13.4 billion to $19.6 billion.