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protective measures. These limitations will be temporary and last up to six months. The law also provides that in order to extend effective currency restrictions or introduce a new restriction, provided less than six months have passed after cessation of a similar preceding measure, the NBU's council will be required to confirm the existence of a crisis. Furthermore, the law prescribes accountability and public exposure of the NBU during implementation, extension and performance assessment of protective measures. The NBU's governor Yakiv Smolii believes that the law will create favourable, transparent and safe conditions for doing business in Ukraine and open doors to foreign investors. The Ukrainians, in turn, will have the right to invest in securities on global markets and deposit funds in bank account in any bank in the world, Smolii said in the statement.
Ukraine has injected $15.5bn to prop up its state-owned banks since 2008 , according to Managing Director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Francis Malige. Specifically, $5.8bn was injected in capitalisation of PrivatBank, nationalised in late 2016, $3.5bn in Oschadbank, $2.8bn in Ukreximbank, $1.6bn in Rodovid Bank, $1.4bn in Ukrgasbank and $0.5bn in Bank Kyiv, the banker wrote on his official Facebook page.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) is claiming circa UAH25bn ($956mn) of refinancing loans granted to insolvent banks via the courts , the regulator's director of risk management department Igor Budnyk said in a statement. "Now, 89 cases on a total amount of claims of UAH25bn are being considered by courts of various instances. The NBU is constantly and systematically working on recovering of debt with the funds and property of guarantors of insolvent banks," Budnyk said. According to Ukrainian legislation, guarantors of insolvent banks are their owners.
8.1.4 Bank news
Ukraine’s State Export-Import Bank is back in the black after posting a UAH765mn profit for 2017 , according to audited consolidated accounts released in the last week of June.
A year before, the bank reported UAH977mn in net losses. The bank’s net interest income before provisions decreased 12% y/y to UAH2.83bn in 2017, mostly due to a fall in interest income by 10% y/y (to UAH12.34bn), which outpaced a drop in interest costs (by 9% y/y to UAH9.51bn).
The key factor of the bank’s bottom line improvement was reduced loan loss provisioning (by 88% y/y to UAH0.67bn), report Concorde Capital. Another factor was a decrease in OpEx by 3% y/y to UAH1.78bn. Ukreximbank’s operating cash flow before changes in assets and liabilities surged 3.1x y/y to UAH1.12bn.
The bank’s gross loan portfolio increased 11% y/y to UAH115.9bn in 2017, fueled mostly by increased lending to state enterprises (by 40% y/y to UAH28.11bn). In particular, the bank increased lending to a state-controlled extraction company (most likely, Naftogaz) by 59% y/y to UAH16.86bn.
Ukreximbank’s net loan portfolio increased 16% y/y to UAH67.61bn. Its securities portfolio climbed 6% y/y to UAH76.4bn, while its portion in total
41 UKRAINE Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com