How National bank fools us

The chairman of the National Bank Pyotr Prakapovich has tried to shift responsibility for a one-time 20% devaluation of the ruble onto the IMF.

However, “Salidarnasts” newspaper has found the quote which disproves this statement of the chairman of the National bank of Belarus.

“Holding one-time devaluation was a requirement of the IMF,” Prakapovich stated at a press-conference on January 28. “We have been trying to persuade them for three months that a gradual devaluation would be better in our conditions, though there was no dispute about the size of devaluation. We haven’t been able to persuade then the usefulness of smooth devaluation grounding on the previous experience… We couldn’t risk agreement with the IMF: too much had been thrown into the scale… We had no choice”.

So, according to the version offered by the chairman of the National Bank, the tactics of devaluation was imposed by the International Monetary Fund. The undertone what’s behind it is clear: unload responsibility for a new year surprise to the Belarusian people onto cursed bourgeois.

However Pyotr Prakapovich has forgotten something.

“The International Monetary Fund has recommended the National Bank to decrease the Belarusian ruble’s exchange rate, but they didn’t have recommendations as for tactics, tactics hadn’t been dictated by anybody to us. We have chosen the scenario of one-time decrease of exchange rate independently… The decision to devaluate the national currency was legally adopted by the board of directors of the National Bank of Belarus with the agreement of Belarusian president”.

It was a quotation from an interview of the head of the informational department of the National bank Anatol Drazdou in an interview to Interfax agency on January 5. Consequently, somebody from the representatives of the National bank misinformed the public. And it seems that is it wasn’t Drazdou.

Another evidence of sincerity of the National Bank’s representatives: a passage from an interview of the first deputy chairman of the National Bank management Pavel Kallaur to the weekly “Belarusy i rynok” in December:

- So one-time devaluation, for instance by 20% is out of the question?

- We do not consider that. Devaluation by 20% is much. It is rather painful procedure, and to hold it one should think it over thousand times. The state of our society’s balance of payment is not so awful to resort to such measures as one-time 20% devaluation.

So, Mr. Prakapovich, you say that there was no dispute about the size of devaluation with the IMF? Have you been discussing for three months should it be done gradually or as a one-time procedure, haven’t you? So why in December your assistant claimed that the variant of 20% devaluation hadn’t been even considered?

For a long time the National Bank urged our citizens to keep savings in a bank in Belarusian rubles, claiming that nothing could threaten stability of our currency. Such statements were heard especially often in the end of 2008 when it was clear devaluation was inevitable. Officials misled the people knowingly. And it should be admitted, that it has been done rather successfully: many people believes that the ruble cannot be devaluated.

And now the National Bank wants on the one hand to receive a new credit of trust of Belarusians, and on the other, continues to hang noodles on people’s ears (fool them). As the abovementioned quotes show that the main bank of the country has even more serious problems with honesty than with money.