The Rada approved yesterday a banking reform bill seen as a key step to restarting Ukraine’s stalled $5 billion IMF program

, Reuters reports. Passed on first reading, the bill strengthens the independence of the central bank and expands its regulatory powers to push out corrupt or incompetent managers or board members of private and state banks. In 2015-2017, the central bank closed two thirds of Ukraine’s privately owned banks and nationalized the largest one, PrivatBank.