First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Kateryna Rozhkova says the banking regulator forecasts Ukraine's banking system in 2018 may post a record high profit in more than a decade.
Read alsoNBU leaves its key policy rate unchanged at 18%
"According to the results of 2018, the [banking] sector will post profit, which, according to our preliminary estimates, may be a record high in more than 10 years," she said at a briefing on December 17.
Rozhkova added that Ukrainian banks received about UAH 15 billion (US$538.8 million) in profit in the 10 months of 2018.
"We predict that the banking sector's profitability will grow next year. First, this is due to the completion of the balance sheets purge – recognizing bad loans, creating reserves, and handling additional capitalization. We don't foresee significant expenditures on the reserves in future," she added.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian solvent banks in January-October 2018 received UAH 14.827 billion (US$532.6 million) in profit, which was seven times up from UAH 2.154 billion ($77.4 million) year-over-year (y-o-y).
Ukraine's banking system posted a total of UAH 24.4 billion ($876.4 million) in losses in 2017 due to the significant amount of allocations for the banks' reserves.
