The recent successful listing of government bonds in hryvnia became the swan song of the Finance Ministry as the next wave of the financial crisis forced investors to refrain from investing in the securities of developing countries, including Ukrainian securities, Kyiv Weeklywrote this week.
“The ministry did not increase the profit margin of T-bills in order to attract the interest of investors. As a result, the government lost its chance to attracting investments into primary auctions. The need to pay off earlier debts practically exhausted the financial resources of the Cabinet. This became evident at the end of September, when the largest sum of redemption of T-bills the treasury accounts of central and municipal bodies of power were blocked for nearly a week,” Oleh Ivanets, an analyst at Art Capital, told KW.
Analysts believe the NBU will be forced to turn on the mint in the closing months of 2011. “We do not rule out the possibility of additional emission of hryvnia, seeing as the government needs 8.5 billion hryvnia by the end of the year to cover its domestic debts,” says an analyst of the EAVEX Capital investment company Dmytro Byriuk.
“The government will come up against its biggest problems at the end of this year, when it will have to seek additional financing of the national budget. At that point, it will most likely turn to the central bank with a request to print additional hryvnia. The NBU has tried to limit printing money understanding that more will be needed later,” his colleague President of the Ukrainian Analytical Center Oleksandr Okhrymenko added.
