18:16
22.10.2025
Photo: https://bank.gov.ua/
Most bankers surveyed by Interfax-Ukraine expect that the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) will leave the key policy rate unchanged at 15.5% per annum at the meeting on October 23, however, some experts allow for its decrease by 0.5 percentage points (pp).
“In the current conditions, when inflationary risks and seasonal factors persist, the optimal solution would be to leave the key policy rate at 15.5%. The market will perceive such a decision of the Monetary Committee positively,” said Dmytro Zamotayev, director of the retail business department of Globus Bank.
In his opinion, after consumer prices decreased in the summer, they increased by 0.3% in September, and an increase of 0.3-0.5 percentage points is expected in October.
Serhiy Hnezdilov, Head of the Department for Work on International Markets and Money Circulation at Radabank, also believes that the rate will remain unchanged since inflation remains high and high rates can maintain the attractiveness of hryvnia deposits.
At the same time, Oleksandr Pecherytsyn, the director of the analytical research department of Raiffeisen Bank, believes that the National Bank is likely to begin a cycle of easing monetary policy by lowering the rate, thereby interrupting the “cycle of the unchanged rate,” which lasted seven and a half months.
According to Pecherytsyn, a cautious decrease in the rate by 50 basis points, to 15.0%, may be the first step to test the market’s reaction and stability of the trend towards decreasing inflation.
Bankers expect better inflation dynamics in the third quarter to provide a basis for adjusting the NBU’s macroeconomic forecast for 2025–2026.
At the same time, according to respondents, even with favorable inflationary developments, the rate cuts may be moderate and extended over time, and no significant changes in economic growth forecasts are expected yet.
As reported, the National Bank has been holding the key policy rate at 15.5% for five consecutive meetings since the beginning of March 2025, and before that, it had increased it three times since mid-December 2024. Even earlier, it held it at 13% for six months, to which it was reduced from 25% in July 2023 in seven stages.