Finance

Tuesday, September 14

World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia, Anna Bjerde is in Kyiv on her first official visit to Ukraine from September 12 to September 15, 2021. Ms. Bjerde will meet with the Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, and other members of the Ukrainian g...

Ukrposhta intends to sign an agreement to buy a small Ukrainian bank within the next two quarters. KPMG is assisting the national mail provider with its search. Ukrposhta announced a tender for the selection of a bank appraiser in mid-May 2021. The CEO of Ukrposhta, Igor Smilyansky, told Forbes. &#...

Fund of Funds in Ukraine for US investors. The Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, has presented an idea of launching a Fund of Funds in Ukraine for US investors. “The state will not only invest in startups b...

Ukrainian Banks have issued UAH 690 million mortgages at 7%. As of September 13, banks have concluded 811 loan agreements valued at UAH 689.62 million within the framework of the state program “Affordable Mortgage 7%”. According to the Ministry of F...

Friday, September 10

NBU raises the interest rate to 8.5%. As expected, on 9 September the National Bank (NBU) raised the interest rate to 8.5%. The move is aimed at combating soaring inflation and reassuring International donors of the central bank’s indepen...

State mortgage institution and Ukrfinzhytlo merged. On September 8 the government approved the merger of the State Mortgage Institution with Ukrfinzhytlo, which ensures the functioning of the mortgage lending market in Ukraine and introduces financial ...

Govt. preparing to issue govt bonds for $748 mln to develop the mortgage market. According to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal: “After the completion of the merger [of the State Mortgage Institution and Ukrfinzhytlo], we are preparing a bond issue worth about UAH 20 billion so t...

Latest BNE IntelliNews Ukraine Country Report highlights. The report issued this month says that “Ukraine’s economy fell back into recession in the second quarter of this year as the fallout from the pandemic and soaring inflation that caused the National Ba...

BNE IntelliNews Sept. 2021 Ukraine Country Report conclusions. “Ukraine’s economy has been recovering from last year’s crisis with industrial production bouncing back strongly in April, up 13% y/y. However, the growth is going off the boil now with industrial pro...

Conference on the investment potential of Vinnytsia region. It’s taking place in Vinnytsia on September 10 and will be organized jointly by the Government Investment Promotion Office UkraineInvest and Vinnytsia Regional State Administration. The event is an ex...

Thursday, September 9

Parliament legalizes virtual assets. The bill on virtual assets was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada at the second reading on September 8. It was supported by 276 MPs. Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedor...

Government to submit a draft budget for 2022 to parliament on Sept 15. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced this on September 8. He said the draft will be balanced, realistic, and will contain clear priorities, including support and development of defense capabilities,...

Dragon Capital downgrades Ukraine’s GDP growth forecast for 2021 from 4.6% to 3.5%. Dragon Capital’s CEO, Tomas Fiala, says this is due to unexpectedly worse than expected preliminary GDP data for the second quarter of this year. Surprisingly, wholesale trade fell to 5.7% in the firs...

Dragon Capital on the main risks and concerns. Fiala named Russia as risk number one to the Ukrainian economy. The second, a possible deterioration in the commodity and financial markets. Third, a rollback in the reforms. He recalled that since 20...

The number of non-bank market participants decreased in August. In August 2021, 8 new companies entered the nonbank financial services market in Ukraine, while 13 left. The number of nonbank financial market participants decreased from 1,938 (as of July 31) to 1,9...

Wednesday, September 8

Single treasury account balance grows sixfold in August reaching UAH 57.5 billion as of September 1st. According to the Prime Minister, the state budget received UAH 28 billion more than budgeted during the first eight months of this year and UAH 106 billi...

NBU purchased $159M on the interbank foreign exchange market last week. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) purchased $159 million on the interbank foreign exchange market last week, according to the NBU between August 30 and September 3, 2021. The regulator also sold $7 m...

NBU provides refinancing for three banks. On September 3, 2021, a quantitative tender was held for the refinancing of banks for a term of 84 days. The applications of three banks for a total sum of UAH 535.0 million at an interest rate of 9.0...

Ukraine enters the top 5 of global crypto-asset perception. It’s now in 4th place in the rating of the global crypto-asset perception index in 2021, compiled by the US analytical company Chainalysis after Vietnam, India, and Pakistan.

Cryptocurrency currency trading is around UAH bln per day. Maksym Demianiuk, the Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Digital Transformation, added that “the Ministry of Digital Transformation has set itself the task of providing regulatio...

Tuesday, September 7

Large-scale privatization is underway . The process was unlocked by the parliament in March 2021. According to Deputy Head of the President’s Office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a four-fold increase in state budget revenues from privatizatio...

Monday, September 6

Ukraine to strengthen cooperation with U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It intends to develop the electronic exchange of tax information with the IRS. This was announced following a meeting in Washington between First Deputy Prime Minister, Economy Minister Oleksiy Liubch...

Ukraine’s international reserves exceed $30 billion, adequate under the IMF criterion. According to Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Serhiy Nikolaychuk, After the payment of more than $1.3 billion on Eurobonds on September 1, internationa...

IMF Fund mission is expected shortly, and Ukraine intends to request the next tranche. Oleh Ustenko, adviser to the president on economic issues, has told Dom TV that in fulfillment of its obligations, Ukraine is strengthening the independence of the National Bank and intensifying effor...

600 million in macro-financial assistance awaited from EU. Presidential economic advisor Ustenko also affirmed that Kyiv expects this support by September 14.

Finance Minister expects to keep inflation within 10%. Serhiy Marchenko believes will be possible to keep inflation within 10%. According to the State Statistics Service, inflation in July 2021 increased to 10.2% in annual terms, while in June this figure...

Metinvest sees record semiannual profitability. Metinvest has published its 1H21 financial results, reporting net sales of $8.5bn (+54% h-o-h, +70% y-o-y), with metallurgical segment revenues up 50% h-o-h and 65% y-o-y to $6.4bn and mining segment ...

Friday, September 3

Tax revenues exceed the target. In January-August 2021, the general fund of the state budget received UAH 700 billion, which is 104.1% of the target for this period, the Ukrainian Finance Ministry has reported. “Revenues from paymen...

Ukraine pays off part of Eurobonds worth over $1.3 billion. “On September 1, 2021, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine repaid the third series Eurobonds issued during the restructuring in 2015. The total redemption amounted to more than USD 1.3 billion, i...

Thursday, September 2

MOU signed with US Export-Import Bank to strengthen trade relations. Its main purpose is to strengthen economic bilateral cooperation on trade in goods and services. Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy and Eximbank will work out options for using medium-term and long-term gu...

Scope for deepening cooperation with World Bank identified. President Zelensky discussed with World Bank Group President David Malpass land reform, irrigation, and agricultural development. He reported that the World Bank is ready to support land reform, irrig...

ICU launches Ukraine’s first mobile application for online trade-in government bonds. It allows the user to buy and sell government domestic loan bonds in real-time from all mobile devices. The ICU Investment Group says this is the first such mobile application on the Ukrainian market....

Wednesday, September 1

Economy minister meets with U.S. trade representative. The First Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Economy Oleksii Liubchenko and the U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met in Washington on August 30 to discuss strengthening Ukraine-U.S. coop...

What IMF assistance will be used for. According to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal , the $2.7 billion in non-refundable financial assistance received from the International Monetary Fund in August will be used to contribute to macroeconomic ...

Finance Ministry is preparing a bill on indirect methods of determining income in 2021. It might be ready for submission to the Verkhovna Rada by the end of 2021, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko says. He acknowledges the introduction of indirect methods for identifying income was a con...

Tuesday, August 31

J.P. Morgan has downgraded the forecast of real GDP growth in 2021 to 4.5% from 5.6% in its April forecast. It’s nevertheless more optimistic than Oxford Economics which, as reported by UBN yesterday, has just downgraded its similar forecast to 4% from 4.4%. J.P. Morgan pred...

Second attempt to sell UMMC (United Mining and Chemical Company) scheduled for Oct. 29, Reuters reports. The starting price has been set at 3.7 billion hryvnias – $136 million. Ukraine aims to raise about 12 billion hryvnias by selling state assets in 2021 to partially finance the ...

Monday, August 30

Oxford Economics presents more sober forecast. While official Kyiv is claiming that the economy is rebounding, not everyone’s so optimistic. Oxford Economics has just downgraded the forecast for GDP growth in 2021 to 4% from 4.4% in the July forec...

Friday, August 27

The economy is recovering from the “coronavirus downfall, ” the Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the Government on August 26. “For the first time in many months, the agricultural sector grew by 2.5%. There’s an active upturn is in important industries...

The profit of medium and large Ukrainian enterprises has also risen. In the first half of the year, it amounted to UAH 462 billion, which is 76% more than last year. These funds are becoming an important source of domestic investment and wage growth, Shmyhal said.

Finance Ministry’s aim in public debt market is to switch to long-term instruments, will dictate conditions , the Minister Serhiy Marchenko told Interfax-Ukraine. It’s striving to be as efficient as possible in the markets of state internal and external debt and to avoid unexpected developments. “We h...

US considering providing Ukraine with guarantees on national debt? The Finance Minister said that the US is examining the possibility of resuming the practice of providing Ukraine with guarantees on government debt bonds. Commenting on his visit to Washington last mo...

Thursday, August 26

Kolomoisky and Bogoliubov lost an appeal in US court. On August 23 a Delaware court dismissed a claim by Privatbank’s former owners stop consideration of case filed by the bank in US. Privatbank is suing its former ownership Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogol...

IMF SBA for Ukraine could be extended for six months, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko believes. He is hopeful the current 18-month Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with the IMF could be extended for six months. Discussion are under way and Ukraine expects th...

Ukraine hoping for a new tranche from the IMF soon. Ukraine is also hoping to receive a $700 million tranche from the IMF in September, the adviser to the President Zelenskiy on economic issues, Oleh Ustenko, says

Wednesday, August 25

IMF gives Ukraine a fantastic birthday present. Ukraine has received 1.9 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), equivalent to about $2.7 billion, from the IMF, the First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Kateryna Rozhkova, anno...

The IMF’s generosity is under fire. Its decision to give neighboring Belarus, whose President Alexander Lukashenko is accused of usurping power and accused of dictatorship, about $1 billion, is being strongly criticized by the Belarusia...

Ukraine wants to accelerate the abolition of customs tariffs with the EU , Prime Minister Shmyhal announced on August 24. Bilateral negotiations will begin in September 2021.

Fitch Ratings revise IDRs of major Ukrainian cities. The international rating agency Fitch Ratings has updated the forecast on the Long-term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) of Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Lviv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, and Odesa in foreign and local...

Thursday, August 19

To promote exports to nontraditional markets, the Cabinet of Ministers allocated $67.5 million yesterday to Ukraine’s Export Credit Agency, Prime Minister Shmyhal announced on Telegram. Noting that Ukraine’s exports were up 31% yoy in the first h...