Finance Ministry, NBU looking for options to restart govt bonds market - Marchenko
The Minister of Finance of Ukraine announces his intention, together with the National Bank, to restart and activate the market for domestic government borrowings, determine their market rate and the path to it in order to ensure a 100% rollover next year and minimize the purchase of government bonds by the National Bank, preferably reducing it to zero, Minister of Finance Serhiy Marchenko said.
"Recently, we have an understanding of how we will do this. I would like to thank the National Bank for understanding. We are looking for various options to actually restart the bond market," the minister said at the discussion on how the Ukrainian economy survived 2022 organized by the Center for Economic Strategy.
Marchenko stated that the option of financing the budget by the population and businesses at rates below market rates, which, for example, worked in the United States during World War II, partially worked in Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, but is not applicable now.
"We are forced to use the tool of monetary transmission, withdrawing excess cash from the market, we are working here in parallel with the National Bank of Ukraine. In addition to the function of banal deficit financing, we believe that we should be partners and coordinate our joint policy with the National Bank, while maintaining our independence in terms of defining policy, shaping supply and demand," the minister said.
Joint work on restarting the government bonds market was also confirmed by Governor of the National Bank Andriy Pyshny.
The week before last, the NBU decided to increase the required reserves of banks, allowing them to form half of them at the expense of government bonds, which should increase demand for government securities by about UAH 50 billion.
In turn, the Ministry of Finance raised the rates of bonds for a period of 5 to 24 months to 14-19.5% per annum since October, although in the secondary market they reach 20% per annum and higher.