Page 36 - UKRRptFeb20

8.0​ Financial & capital markets 8.1​ Bank sector overview
Ukraine’s banking sector has returned to profit but is still plagued by high levels of NPLs.
In September​ ​banks​ ​earned UAH4bn ($161mn) in the month to bring the cumulative earnings for 2019 to UAH48.4bn ($1.9bn) as of September.
That is a lot better than last year. the banking sector lost money in September in the last two years, UAH2.8bn and UAH2bn in 2018 and 2017 respectively. And by September 2018 the sector had only earned a merge UAH10.9bn – a fifth as much as this year but still almost ten times more than the UAH1.4bn it had earned in the first nine months of 2017.
At the same time the return on assets has also improved from under 2% for most of 2018 to almost 5% in 2019 with the ROA reading 4.9% in October. As the charts show the sector has clearly returned to health and profits are clearly rising, but serious problems remain.
36​ UKRAINE Country Report​ February 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com