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including three “architectural monuments,” says Yevhenia Bozhko, managing partner of the National Electronic Stock Exchange.
Ukrposhta sees its expansion into postal banking as a key to democratizing finance in Ukraine. Over the last decade, Ukrposhta figures have illustrated that the number of bank branches in Ukraine dropped by 65%, to 7,134. Over the same time, the number of post offices fell by only 22%, to 10,706. In Ukraine, there are nine POS terminals per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to 29 in the EU.
Ukrposhta will have installed 7,500 point of sale terminals by the end of July , said the state postal company. This will make Ukrposhta the fifth largest user of POS terminals in Ukraine. In addition to bringing cashless payments to small towns in Ukraine, the POS terminals allow cardholders to withdraw up to UAH 15,000 ($554) in cash from their postal banking accounts.
Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelenskiy has prolonged sanctions against several Russian banks, including Gazprombank, Sberbank, and VTB Bank, for three years on June 24.
Ukraine has added to the sanctions list 55 legal entities and three individuals including several Russian banks and payment systems that are prohibited to export capital from Ukraine and whose assets are to be blocked.
The sanctions list now comprises 538 individuals including CEO of gas giant Gazprom Alexei Miller, CEO of VTB Bank Andrei Kostin, and Russian businessmen Oleg Deripaska, Pavel Fuks, and Igor, Arkady and Roman Rotenberg, and 540 companies including national flagship air carrier Aeroflot and state industrial corporation Rostec.
In March 2017, Kiev introduced sanctions against all subsidiaries of Russian banks – Ukrainian units of Sberbank and VTB Bank, VS Bank of Sberbank, BM Bank of VTB, and VEB.RF’s unit Prominvestbank, prohibiting all financial operations in favor of affiliated parties, including parent banks.
8.2 Central Bank policy rate
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) defied market expectations for a 100bp rate hike by keeping its prime lending rate on hold at 7.5% during its monetary policy meeting on June 17, despite inflation that has topped 9.5% in May.
The central bank was widely expected to hike rates aggressively to tackle inflation and its previous governor Yakiv Smolii earned a reputation similar to Central Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina for inflation fighting and a conservative monetary policy.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted an increase to 8% after Ukraine saw its inflation become Europe’s second-fastest behind Turkey.
“Big surprise this for me. After the really disappointing inflation print last month I would have said a hike in the base rate by at least 100bps was a slam dunk,” Tim Ash, Senior Sovereign Strategist at BlueBay Asset Management.
51 UKRAINE Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com