Page 42 - UKRRptMay21

8.0 Financial & capital markets 8.1 Bank sector overview
Ukraine’s banks are back in profit and growing again, but they are still running behind the levels of 2019 and 2020. Banks earned a cumulative ($393mn)mn in March, down on the UAH12,902mn and UAH15,974 they earned in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
On a monthly basis banks earned UAH4,444mn which was well ahead of the year previously where banks essentially earned nothing as the oil price shock hit. Last year monthly earnings recovered again in April as the banks regrouped and had a good month, but the growth of banks for the rest of 2020 fell below the results of 2019, the first year of strong growth since 2014.
The outlook for this year is much better and banks should be able to surpass the results of 2020 without too much trouble but currently they are running slightly behind the 2019 curve and Ukraine is still grappling with the coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic which remains a wildcard.
The sector has made real progress in the fight to reduce the NPLs with retail NPLs falling steadily to a new low of 25.5% of the portfolio. Corporate NLPs also fell more quickly and the sector aggregate is down to 39.9% in April from 48.9% a year previously.
Within the subsectors of the banks privately owned banks have reduced NPLs the most to 13.1% from 18.6% a year previously and are within two years of
42 UKRAINE Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com