Viktor Pynzenyk

Viktor Mykhailovych Pynzenyk ( uk, Віктор Михайлович Пинзеник) (born 15 April 1954) is a Ukrainian politician, economist, and former Minister of Finance. He is the former leader of the Reforms and Order Party.

Pynzenyk has been credited with economic reform in post-Soviet Ukraine, helping to transform the country into a market economy and introducing Ukraine's new currency, the hryvnia in September 1996, with the help of Viktor Yushchenko, at the time Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Early life

Viktor Pynzenyk was born on April 15, 1954, in Smolohovytsia, in the westernmost Zakarpattia Oblast (province) of the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine) to Mykhailo and Mariya Pynzenyk. After completing his secondary education, Pynzenyk studied at the Lviv State University, from which he graduated in 1975 as an economist. He stayed on in the same university until 1979 for the post-graduate work on his dissertation in Economics which he defended in 1980 receiving the degree of Candidate of Science (roughly Ph.D. equivalent). He continued his scientific work in the Moscow State University where he received his Doktor of Science degree in 1989. A year later, Pynzenyk became a professor of economics at his alma mater—the Lviv University.

In 1996, he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Political and economic career

Pynzenyk was sworn into Ukrainian parliament on January 4, 1992, and soon afterwards became a member of the economic reforms working group. Later that year, he became the Vice-Prime Minister of Ukraine as well as the Minister of Economy. As minister, Pynzenyk introduced the first economic reforms in the newly independent Ukraine, helping transform the country into a market economy.

In March 1992, Pynzenyk was elected to the second convocation of the parliament as part of the "Reforms" faction, serving his mandate until April 1998. As an MP, he participated in the finance and banking work group. From October 31, 1994 until September 5, 1995, he served as the country's First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, and from August 3, 1995 to April 7, 1997—as the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine.

Viktor was elected to Verkhovna Rada for the third time in the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election serving from March 1998 until the next election in 2002. In 2002, Pynzenyk was elected as part of the " Our Ukraine" electoral bloc. Three years later, after the Orange Revolution, Pynzenyk was chosen as the Minister of Economy on February 4, 2005, and served his post until August 2006. Then on November 3, 2007, he became a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the sixth convocation as a member of the Reforms and Order Party, which participated in the elections as part of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

Viktor Pynzenyk served as the Minister of Finance of Ukraine in the Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko