MBS Blog

The short term outlook for foreign investment in Ukraine is not positive. As this assessment by Oxford Analytica on www.forbes.com indicates, this is partially due to the continued slide of the hryvnia as well as the inability of the Ukrainian Government and Central Bank to intervene successfully on a consistent basis.

As this article hints, foreign currency controls may be imposed. This will almost crimp foreign investment and trade to an even greater extent.

Global Financial Crisis

Ukraine: Currency Slide Stalls Foreign Investment

Oxford Analytica, 12.11.08, 06:00 AM EST

Sporadic, counter-productive market interventions could reignite liquidity problems.

Newly elected parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn announced yesterday that Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko would reform their fractious governing coalition. Lytvyn’s selection as speaker will help break Ukraine’s legislative deadlock, but it remains uncertain whether Yushchenko and Tymoshenko can cobble together a functioning government.

One of the most critical challenges the authorities face is the severe devaluation of the hryvnia, which has fallen to all-time lows against major foreign currencies in the last two months. Furthermore, Ukraine’s domestic currency markets are now experiencing the worst deficit of foreign currency since the regional financial crisis of the late 1990s.

Questionable Policies?
Given the extent of the ongoing currency devaluation, it is hardly surprising that the wisdom of the central bank’s policies has been widely questioned.

–Sporadic market interventions.Rising devaluation pressures have prompted the National Bank of Ukraine to resume its active presence on the wholesale currency market. Earlier in the year–and especially in the aftermath of the most recent one-off currency revaluation in May–the bank clearly preferred to keep its presence at the minimum needed to ensure nominal currency stability. However, in the ensuing crisis, the NBU took its time in responding to the changing currency situation; it was not until early October that the first large-scale interventions were actually conducted.

Even then, such interventions proved surprisingly sporadic, and were only able to temporarily slow, not prevent, the devaluation. Moreover, after having spent as much as $6.6 billion in foreign reserves in October to support the hryvnia, the NBU sharply scaled back its spending in November to around 2.2 billion dollars.

Apart from obvious concern over the rapid depletion of foreign reserves, the drawdown apparently reflected the bank’s belief that it could still retreat to the very last “line of defense” for the currency. NBU chief adviser Valery Litvitski has suggested that it will now defend the current trading rate with all the resources at its disposal.

–Counter-productive refinancing. The NBU has also had to increase its financial aid to domestic commercial banks, many–if not all–of which have been suffering from the financial crisis. In November, the NBU provided just over 35 billion hryvnia in loans to commercial banks, up from approximately 30 billion in the previous month. By comparison, the cumulative volume of refinancing in the first nine months of 2008 amounted to 63 billion.

However, the NBU has either failed or neglected to properly control recipient banks’ use of such resources. As a result, rather than being subsequently lent to the real economy, most of the hryvnia-denominated resources obtained in the last three months have found their way to the currency market, only exacerbating devaluation pressures. It is mainly for this reason that Yushchenko has recently chosen to publicly criticize the NBU’s overall handling of the raging currency crisis.

Outlook 
Although the latest trading week saw the market rate essentially stalling at a ceiling of 7.5 hryvnia per dollar, this may well be a temporary point in the hryvnia’s downward slide. Decreasing foreign investment inflows, compressed external borrowing and falling export revenue mean any firm stabilization of the currency will come slowly.

Furthermore, additional short-term factors threaten to delay the stabilization–of particular concern is state holding company Naftohaz’s planned foreign currency purchases to repay debt owed for

In any case, the NBU is likely to face difficulties in fulfilling its freshly declared task of preserving the hryvnia. In terms of possible market interventions, the regulator is constrained by the International Monetary Fund’s requirement that it hold no less than $26.7 billion in net foreign reserves by the end of 2008–a condition attached to the $16.4 billion loan Ukraine recently received.

As of December, gross reserves stood at $32.7 billion. Should the NBU be forced to focus on reducing foreign currency demand by purely monetary methods, restrictions will almost certainly reignite liquidity problems. This could exacerbate the real economy’s deterioration.

Technorati Tags: Ukraine, foreign investment, Naftohaz, commercial banks, NBU, NBU, currency market, liquidity, Volodymyr Lytwyn, Yulia Tymoshenko, Viktor Yushenko, Oxford Analytica, www.forbes.com, Ukrainian Government, National Bank of Ukraine, Anton Olff, foreign currency, hyrvnia, currency controls, Global Financial Crisis,

Technorati Tags: Richard Hainsworth, short-term funding, Russian economy, CIS countries, tax year, irrational exuberance, irrational pessimism, traders, corporate defaults, Russian banks, liquidity, Anton Olff, emerging markets, foreign competition, RusRating/Global Rating, Russia, www.businessneweurope.eu, economic crisis, Russian government,

Well…this move was easy to predict. As reported on www.bloomberg.com, the Ukrainian Government is now restricting bank withdrawals.  In some ways, this is like closing the barn door after the horse has already made it out.  Many companies had anticpated this change, and have acted already.

Interesting to see if further restrictions are placed in the near term. In the meantime, I am going over to the ATM near my office to make a cash withdrawal.  

Ukraine Restricts Bank Withdrawals to Avert Liquidity Crisis 

By Kateryna Choursina

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Ukraine’s central bank restricted withdrawals from banks before the maturity date of individual contracts to avert a liquidity crisis.

The Kiev-based Natsionalnyi Bank Ukrainy said in a letter to commercial lenders on Dec. 6 that early withdrawals of deposits “leaves liquidity of some banks under threat,” according to a statement on the bank’s Web site.

The central bank introduced a six-month moratorium for domestic lenders to return deposits to clients before contracts with banks that ended on Oct. 13 after depositors started withdrawing their money. Ukrainians were withdrawing as much as 2 billion hryvnia ($100 million) a day in the first days of October, First Deputy central bank Governor Anatoliy Shapovalov said on Oct. 24.

The regulator also recommended that banks reduce foreign- currency interest rates, according to a statement on its Web site also dated Dec. 6.

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We are in a recession…so what are we going to do about it? As individuals and organizations we have to improvise, adjust and overcome.  The “capitalist tools” over at www.forbes.com know what businesses need to do.

Many companies are thinking: cut expenses to the bone, particularly advertising and marketing expenses. Well…as I mentioned in last week in Recessionary Marketing (http://www.medblacksea.com/blog/2008/11/recessionary-marketing/ )  the best strategy might be to employ some “contrarian” tactics:

Don’t Skimp On Ad Budgets

Knowledge@Wharton, 12.01.08, 05:30 PM EST

Cutting advertising expenses can yield short-term gains–and long-term trouble.

With corporate managers under enormous pressure to control costs and maintain liquidity in the current credit crisis, advertising budgets often appear to be a dispensable luxury in the struggle to survive. Executives who succumb to that temptation, however, put the long-term future of their companies at risk, according to Wharton faculty and advertising experts.

“The first reaction is to cut, cut, cut, and advertising is one of the first things to go,” says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader, adding that as companies slash advertising in a downturn, they leave empty space in consumers’ minds for aggressive marketers to make strong inroads. Today’s economy “provides an unusual opportunity to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd,” says Fader, “but it takes a lot of courage and convincing to get senior management on board with that.”

According to Wharton marketing professor Leonard Lodish, with demand slack for advertising services, the cost of these services goes down, making advertising expenditures all the more defensible in a bad business climate. “If your company has something to say that is relevant in this environment, it’s going to be more efficient to say it now than to say it in better times,” says Lodish.

Research shows that companies that consistently advertise even during recessions perform better in the long run. A McGraw-Hill Research study looking at 600 companies from 1980 to 1985 found that those businesses that chose to maintain or raise their level of advertising expenditures during the 1981 and 1982 recession had significantly higher sales after the economy recovered. Specifically, companies that advertised aggressively during the recession had sales 256% higher than those that did not continue to advertise.

For companies that do stay the course and continue to advertise into a recession or increase their promotional activities, the key is to craft messages that reflect the times and describe how their product or service benefits the consumer. For example, companies might be tempted to emphasize price in a recession, but that only works for companies like Costco(nasdaq: COST - news - people ) and Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT -news - people ) that are built around a core strategy of providing low prices year after year, says Lodish. He points to the current Wal-Mart campaign, “Save Money. Live Better,” as a successful approach to the recession.

Dean Jarrett, senior vice president of marketing at The Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., which developed the Wal-Mart ads, acknowledges the campaign began in 2007 before it was clear a harsh recession was building. “We can’t claim we knew a recession was coming, but ‘Save Money. Live Better’ is dead on-point with who they are and what they want to be.”

Eileen Campbell, chief executive of the Millward Brown Group advertising firm in New York City, says that while companies should probably not dwell on the recession and scare consumers into hoarding their pennies under a mattress, certain products require a straight-up approach–such as financial services. “If you are in the financial services category, to behave as you did a year ago is silly.” At the same time, however, many consumers are weary of negativity generated by the recession and would be receptive to a more upbeat message, she adds. “If you can put a positive spin on how you can genuinely help without invoking doom and gloom, I think that’s going to be more compelling

Technorati Tags: recession, capitalist tools, doom and gloom, financial services, Dean Jarrett, The Martin Agency, Eileen Campbell, Millward Brown Group, New York City, www.forbes.com, advertising, marketing, www.medblacksea.com, recessionary marketing, marketing expenses, liquidity, credit crisis, advertising budgets, The Wharton School, Peter Fader, Leonard Lodish, McGraw-Hill, Anton Olff, Costco, Wal-Mart,