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December in 2020 was very slightly down on the same months a year earlier.
Retail lending makes up about a quarter of total lending by banks, which is well behind other markets where retail and corporate lending are usually on par, so the business still has plenty of growing room.
However, corporate leading has failed to recover and has been falling steadily since March 2019. There was a brief uptick in March 2020 as companies tapped banks for extra resources to cope with the unfolding double whammy of the oil price shock and start of the coronavirus pandemic, but by June corporate lending was falling again to end the year with UAH812,401mn of loans extended in December.
Corporate lending was running behind 2019 and 2018 all year in 2020 but by December it had even fallen behind 2017 levels of loans to companies.
The upside of the low level of corporate borrowing is that the banks have plenty of money from deposits to fund their operations and bank assets have continued to rise throughout 2019 and 2020 largely unaffected by the crises.
43 UKRAINE Country Report January 2021 www.intellinews.com
