Page 11 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

bne February 2022 Companies & Markets I 11
Yara has "sought positive change by leveraging its presence in Belarus to promote occupational safety and human rights", the statement said. The sanctions have reduced the company’s ability to "positively influence the safety and well-being of Belaruskali workers". Yara intends to continue its industrial safety programme at Belaruskali, which it initiated in 2021, the company said. The programme is run in close co-operation with the independent trade union Belarus Independent Trade Union (BITU) as well as in full compliance with applicable sanctions according to the president & CEO of Yara, Svein Tore Holsether.
In the spring of 2021, Yara was one of many companies to come under fire from the exiled Belarusian opposition for
its co-operation with Belaruskali, demanding that Yara discontinue its co-operation. Belaruskali is one of the world's largest potash producers and exports its products all around the globe. It was included in the sanctions imposed after the Lukashenko regime forced a commercial Ryanair flight to land in Minsk and arrested top opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend on May 23 last year. According
CEE banking: As good as it gets in (post-) crisis times and the challenging geopolitical environment
Gunter Deuber in Vienna
Once a year, we at Raiffeisen Research take a close look at regional banking trends in our CEE Banking Report. And before what we hope will be a quiet and peaceful Christmas and New Year, here is a big overview of the most burning CEE banking sector issues.
To give the most important message right away: Leading Western CEE banks have made their contribution to overcoming the crisis. This can be seen in the almost double- digit credit growth rates of exposures to the CE/SEE region in the last 12-18 months.
We at Raiffeisen Research have been monitoring the business of Western banks in CEE – including our valued competitors – for decades. And we have only seen such balance sheet expansions as in the last 12-24 months – if then – in the so-called “CEE bonanza phase” i.e. in the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis and the following CEE banking confidence crisis.
to Yara's own estimates, the company buys between 10-15% of Belaruskali's output.
In a previous statement, BITU president Maksim Pazniakou has praised Yara's efforts to improve worker's safety at Belaruskali and said that they had asked Yara to continue with this support as long as possible. In an email to the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) last year, BITU international secretary Lizaveta Merlyak said that sanctions against Belaruskali would hurt its workers the most. Merlyak argued that if western companies terminated their contracts with Belarusian state companies, it would bring about a cutback in investments
for occupational safety. Furthermore, Merlyak supposed that international sanctions against Belaruskali would allow Russian potash companies to buy Belarusian mines on the cheap.
Since the protests in 2020, many workers have been fired
by Belaruskali's management and several members of BITU have been detained by Belarusian law enforcement agencies for supporting the protests. This sparked an outcry from international human and worker's rights organisations.
RBI's headquarters in Vienna.
But of course circumstances and market conditions are different this time around. Today, most of the business is (re-) financed locally and not built on imported capital. All major (Western) banking players in the region are running loan-to- deposit ratios in the range of 70-80%.
In this respect, the current business activities can be considered sustainable from a macro-financial perspective. There is no credit growth that leads to macroeconomic imbalances. And especially in markets like Russia, increasingly local (re)financing has become more and more important for major international banks for other reasons as well.
Banks support V-shaped recovery
This time there was no deleveraging during the crisis. Banks contributed to the V-shaped economic recovery. The latter has then led to low NPLs and low risk costs. Moreover, the rapid economic recovery has had an inflationary effect, leading to key interest rate hikes.
www.bne.eu