Exactly 30 years ago, on 13 March 1990, in accordance with the Supreme Council – Reconstituent Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania’s resolution, the first Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania was appointed. Economist Bronius Povilaitis (born 1948) was the one chosen for this position.
Interesting fact: the Chairman of the Board was appointed 12 days after the Bank was established (1 March 1990) and almost immediately after the Restoration of Independence of the State of Lithuania (11 March). When Povilaitis first started working, there basically was no bank as such yet, there was no adopted statute, no core capital, there was a lack of room and specialists. In the beginning, there were only four employees; later, the number increased. And those employees sometimes had to create their own workplace, because the Bank started its operation on the premises of former Soviet banks that still had employees working and they weren’t willing to give up their workplaces easily.
This is how Gražina Slivinskienė, a former employee of the Bank of Lithuania, remembers those first days:
“The beginning was especially interesting. I started my position in May, when four people were already working there: the Chairman of the Board Povilaitis and three others. I was the fifth one. They had already worked in their positions for a couple of months and there was a need for an English language specialist. I started from zero, like the rest of us. When I came on the first day, I saw that there was nothing to work with, so I called my husband and asked him to bring me any dictionaries that I owned as soon as possible, because I immediately received a heaping pile of documents to translate. We started working on these very premises (Totorių str. 4 – V. L.) but it was still called Gosbank. We had one office where photocopiers are now placed and later got a temporary walk-through room on the fourth floor, which is now the bank’s Policy Department. The Chairman had an office where the Head of the General Division now sits. We worked under very modest conditions. No one had even heard of this Bank of Lithuania at the time. Even those working at Gosbank, where we were located, didn’t know the Bank of Lithuania existed.”
After he was appointed the head of the Bank of Lithuania, Povilaitis still, for a month and a half, received a salary from the State Bank of the USSR as its Bank’s of the Republic of Lithuania First Vice-Chairman of the Board. Only on 25 April 1990, under the ordinance of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, almost 0.5 million roubles were appointed from the Council of Ministers reserve fund to cover the expenses of the Bank of Lithuania’s maintenance, whereas an official salary for the Chairman of the Board was set at 730 roubles. The following day, Povilaitis signed his first order as the Chairman. Actually, it was signed retroactively. The order stated that Bronius Povilaitis assumes direct responsibilities as the Chairman of the Board from 19 April 1990.
Povilaitis’ contributions weren’t limited to creating the Bank’s institution; he was also helping to solve other important issues of those times. One of the most significant of those was issuing and printing our own money. Almost all Europe was travelled around in search of eligible presses in various countries. At the same time, litas banknote design contests took place and the Chairman also took part in deliberations. Also, during Povilaitis’ term of office, negotiations with foreign countries started in order to retrieve gold. Povilaitis joined other representatives of the Baltic States in their mission to Moscow to negotiate new conditions for transactions with Russia and other USSR countries. This was needed because the Board of State Bank of the USSR made a one-sided decision without a previous warning that transactions with Lithuania and other Baltic countries can be made only through correspondent accounts opened in Moscow. It took very long negotiations to achieve that, from the middle of May 1990, all undertaking transactions between them and their partners in other countries would be made through correspondent accounts opened in Lithuania. This was, of course, very significant, but the responsibilities that the Chairman of the Bank of Lithuania had did not end there. First steps were taken towards the Bank's smooth operation and issuing our own money.
However, the burden of a high volume of tasks, little attention from other authorities, and meagre help offered to the Bank of Lithuania forced Povilaitis to opt for resignation. On 28 July 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania dismissed him from his position as the Chairman. On 31 July 1990, Vilius Baldišis, a Supreme Council deputy, was appointed to this position.
Povilaitis continued working for the Bank of Lithuania, but in different positions: from 1990 to 1993 he was a Member of the Board, from 1993 to 1996 he was the director of the Monitory Policy department and from 2000 to 2012 – an advisor to the director of this department.
