REUTERS
Ukraine received over US$4 billion in portfolio investment in 2019.
Senior Economist for Ukraine at the World Bank Anastasia Golovach says the situation in China which has seen an outbreak of the novel coronavirus may become a cause behind a reduction in investment in Ukraine.
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In 2019, Ukraine received more than US$4 billion in portfolio investment. Now there are doubts whether the trend will continue, she said at a panel discussion organized by CFA Society Ukraine on February 20.
"Investors' passivity has become one of the reasons why the results of the recent placement of government domestic loan bonds by the Finance Ministry were poor. If this trend continues, it will affect the exchange rate of the national currency," she said.
According to the expert, the World Bank expects no significant risks for the global economy due to the coronavirus outbreak if the wave of infections subsides in a month.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the Chinese authorities reported an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan late in December 2019.
The causative agent of the disease was a new type of coronavirus, COVID-19. The virus is transmitted from person to person, with the incubation period lasting at least two weeks.
On January 30, the World Health Organization declared an international emergency over the spread of the novel coronavirus from China.
As of February 23, 2020, COVID-19 cases had been confirmed in 29 countries, while no laboratory-confirmed cases of the coronavirus had been reported in Ukraine, according to Ukraine's Health Ministry.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts a slowdown in global economic growth over the coronavirus by 0.1 percentage points, to 3.2%.