KIEV, Nov. 19 – The hryvnia continued its slide against the U.S. dollar Wednesday, breaching the psychologically important level of 6 hryvnias to the dollar ahead of an important meeting that may decide the short-term future of the local currency.

The hryvnia closed at 6.04 hryvnias to the dollar in trading between commercial banks, compared with 6.00/dollar on Tuesday, even after the National Bank of Ukraine resumed selling forex reserves.

President Viktor Yushchenko is expected to meet top NBU officials and the country’s biggest commercial banks on Thursday to map out further strategy of dealing with the escalating financial crisis.

At a similar meeting on Oct. 30, both, the NBU and the banks, promised coordinated actions to calm down the market, including “unlimited” hard currency interventions by the central bank.

This policy has quickly stabilized the markets, but the situation had again worsened over the past seven days with downward pressure on the hryvnia mounting amid signs of panic.

“The past several trading sessions indicate that there are expectations of the hryvnia’s weakening,” one dealer said Thursday. “We see persistent gap between demand and supply” of dollars.

The developments mark an important change as officials have previously promised the hryvnia would not lose much value through the end of the year and would certainly not breach the 6-hryvnias-per-dollar level in 2008.

Oleksandr Shlapak, a deputy chief of staff at the Yushchenko office and a former head of the NBU, said there was at least $1 billion daily gap between demand and supply of hard currency on the forex market over the past five days.

The NBU said it had spent about $4.5 billion of its forex reserves to support the hryvnia in October alone, while its interventions in November are thought to be even more aggressive.

The tactic of “unlimited” interventions, which was approved at the meeting on Oct. 30, has been depleting the NBU’s forex reserves without providing long-term support for the hryvnia.

The NBU may correct the policy after the meeting at the Yushchenko office on Thursday, perhaps opening way for a greater deprecation of the hryvnia against the dollar, analysts said.

The International Monetary Fund approved $16.4 billion emergency loan to Ukraine earlier this month, of which $4.5 billion has been already disbursed to the country specifically to support the hryvnia and the banking sector. (tl/ez)