Share
Ukrainians have been selling their U.S. dollar savings in recent months as they are unable to cover all their present expenditures with their usual incomes – wages and pensions – and not because it is a choice of their own, and this tendency cannot be considered promising, President of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (ULIE) Anatoliy Kinakh said while commenting on a recent statement of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), according to which foreign currency sales by Ukrainians have risen seven times.
"The NBU claims that the fact that Ukrainians have been selling more currency is a result of its own 'effective administration.' However, it's not because the NBU stabilized the hryvnia, the market or the economy. The reason for this is a huge growth of prices for everything, which is often groundless as the system of control over them is completely paralyzed in our country. They continue to regulate the dollar exchange rate manually. If they keep doing so, our export and import spheres could be paralyzed. Ukraine will be deprived of both imported goods and domestic products made of foreign raw materials," Kinakh said.
"The situation on the currency market of Ukraine always was an indicator of the population's well-being in general. I mean that Ukrainians are selling U.S. dollars because they are coming short of money for living and not because they started earning more or the economic situation in the country stabilized. This means that citizens have depleted resources of the 'safety cushions,' which allowed keeping savings untouched at the expense of simply cutting costs on entertainment, expensive food or traveling. Many of our citizens have been selling U.S. dollars for two months in a row and what will happen when they exhaust these savings? What will happen when they introduce extremely high housing and utility, electricity, and transport tariffs? Our citizens' wages are not growing due to economic stagnation!" the ULIE president said.
He stressed that the tendency towards impoverishing the population was confirmed by the latest statistics regarding the withdrawal of bank deposits by Ukrainians.
"Ukrainians are closing their deposits not because of distrust in the banking system, but because of a simple lack of funds in families as, except for food and payment for housing and utility services, people also have to pay for healthcare, the education of their children, maintenance of their housing, or help their relatives. That's why this negative tendency for the exhaustion of deposit accounts will continue to exist as the government is delaying the implementation of real anti-crisis measures and the economy is gradually diving. In Q1, 2015 alone, individuals withdrew $1.7 billion in foreign currency deposits and UAH 15.2 billion in hryvnia deposits from the banking system. What stabilization of the situation in the banking system the NBU is talking about?" Kinakh wondered, adding that the Anti-Crisis Council of Non-Governmental Organizations, which he heads, elaborated and submitted to the government an Anti-Crisis Program of Joint Actions of the Government and Businesses a long time ago and insisted on its joint implementation.
If the government does not stop imitating 'reformatory activity' and take urgent measures to boost the economy, revive industries, develop small- and medium-sized businesses, speed up the fulfillment of its obligations for European integration, we will face total impoverishment of the population and social upheaval in the end, the ULIE said.