Grivna kicks off 2018 with NBU miscalculations as Neftegaz has to pay Gazprom $2 billion

By Vladimir V. Sytin

According to Oleg Ustenko, executive director at The Bleyzer Foundation, the grivna rate was volatile last year because of miscalculations made by the National Bank of Ukraine. At the same time, the law on the 2018 national budget proposes the inflation rate at 9%.

Worse still, the Stockholm arbitration court passed a judgement of $2 billion against Ukraine for Russia that would put additional pressure on the grivna rate this year. In particular, the Stockholm court had ordered the Ukrainian national joint stock company Neftegaz to pay more than $2 billion to the Russian gas group Gazprom for gas supply arrears in pursuance of a 'take-or-pay' clause in the 2009-2019 contract between the two countries. Furthermore, it had ordered Neftegaz to buy five billion cubic meters of natural gas from Gazprom annually from this year.

To crown it all, the planned amount of gold and foreign currency reserves might have stood at $30 billion by the end of 2017 in accordance with the IMF cooperation program. As a matter of fact, the reserves amount to only $19.5 billion today.