The National Bank of Ukraine might soon have a new head. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has plans to dismiss him after just over a year. The independence of NBU has been questioned since his predecessor resigned from the bank citing political pressure last summer.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has plans to dismiss the head of the National Bank of Ukraine, Kyryl Shevchenko. This was reported by Bloomberg, who cited three anonymous sources close to Zelenskyy. According to the article, the president is not satisfied with the work of Shevchenko.
Currently, there are two different headaches with NBU. First and foremost, the National Bank of Ukraine is having a hard time controlling inflation which has been above 10 percent since July, peaking in September at 11 percent. This is two times as much as the target rate of inflation. As a consequence, NBU has raised the interest rates several times.
Secondly, after Shevchenko got his position in the bank, there has been an exodus of leading employees. In July, several employees and department heads left their jobs in the bank, saying that the standards of NBU had fallen too low. Some even called Shevchenko “autocratic.”
“We sincerely love the NBU and want to continue working there,” said Oleksandr Bevz, the now-former director of the licensing department. “However, it’s currently impossible to continue our work in the National Bank. The centralization of decision-making in one pair of hands, the replacement of collegiality with directive decision-making, are in our opinion, unacceptable.”
Since the former director of NBU, Yakiv Smolii, left his position, NBU has been cause for many concerns not just in Ukraine, but also in the international community of investors. Most notably, it led to the breakdown in the negotiations between Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund.
