Page 48 - UKRRptJul19

At the same time the corporate loan portfolio is remains significantly larger than retail and was UAH929bn in May. But like retail there is not much action in corporate lending either and the total portfolio of corporate loans was actually down from January’s UAH960nm. Again compared to the start of last year the corporate loans portfolio has barely changed from the UAH892bn lent in January 2018.
The banking sector is slowly returning to health, but as a business it is not doing much more than treading water at the moment.
8.1.1 Earnings
Ukrainian banks report 69.2% increase in profits during the first four months of 2019. Ukraine’s banking sector remains on a strong growth trajectory as the far-reaching reforms of the past five years continue to bear fruit. According to figures released in late May by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Ukrainian banks posted a 69.2% year-on-year increase in profits during the January-April 2019 period to reach a new total of UAH18.1bn. This puts the country’s banking sector firmly on track to surpass last year’s historic high of UAH21.7bn in profits, which was the first profitable year for the industry following the sharp declines of 2014-15. Since 2014, the Ukrainian banking sector has witnessed some of the most fundamental reforms in the entire Ukrainian economy. Around half the country’s banks have closed amid the introduction of rigorous new regulatory powers designed to clean up the sector and return it to profitability.
48 UKRAINE Country Report July 2019 www.intellinews.com