Page 51 - UKRRptSept22

8.0 Financial & capital markets 8.1 Bank sector overview
Ukraine’s banking sector was back in profit for the year in July, but only just, earning a cumulative UAH3.4bn ($91.98mn) year to date, according to the latest data from the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).
This year should have been a good year with banks earning more profits in the first two months than they did a year previously, putting in their second year of strong growth as the economy finally emerged from the recession caused by the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.
However, the start of the war at the end of February brough banking activity to a halt and the bank sector put in deep losses in April and May.
Russia introduced its Phase 2 of the war in April and withdrew its forces from the north of the country to focus its efforts in the Donbas region. That allows the rest of the country to start to go back to work. The reduction in tension was immediately apparent in the banking sector which returned to strong profits on a par with the last two years in May of UAH6.1bn. June saw a setback with losses of UAH3.3bn, but July was very strong with a rebound to UAH8bn, only slightly behind July in 2021, the best month in the sector for more than five
years.
The strong first two months of this year means that the profits earned in July were enough to put the cumulative earnings of the banking sector back into the black for the first seven months of this year.
The central bank has not released all the data covering the sector and the last
51 UKRAINE Country Report September 2022 www.intellinews.com