NBU provides over UAH 101 bn in refinancing loans

The National Bank of Ukraine has provided over UAH 101 bn refinancing loans to the banks, reported Dzerkalo Tyzhnya Ukraine. Many banks are not considering crediting at the moment, as they are struggling to survive, trying to cope with the permanent withdrawal of the deposits. The regulator has not come up with a more adequate response to the current challenge than providing refinancing loans to fill in the gaps in the balances. The price of this support has exceeded a 100-billion mark, totaling UAH 101.279 bn.

The procedures of refinancing remain non-transparent with some institutions getting clear advantages over their competitors. «Many banks applied for refinancing. These are huge figures and it is not always clear why the NBU supports certain banks and their clients», - says Anatoliy Hulei, CEO of the Ukrainian Interbank Foreign Exchange.

Over the past month only, the banks owned by Oleh Bakhmatyuk, who is close to the former NBU Governor Stepan Kubiv, received the largest volumes of financing: Financial Initiative Bank — UAH 3.45 bn, VAB Bank — UAH 480 mn.

PrivatBank owned by Ihor Kolomoyskiy is the second «lucky recipient». It received another UAH 2.4 bn in May from the NBU. The total amount of refinancing received from the regulator thus exceeded UAH 20.188 bn.

State-owned Oschadny Bank is the only larger recipient (UAH 21.6 bn), which last month repaid UAH 3.25 bn to the NBU. However, in case with the state-owned banks, such generosity of the regulator can at least be explained by the necessity to fulfill some government tasks (re-financing of the government, Naftogas and other state monopolies), while in case with Privat (top bank by assets and deposits of the population), it seems, that the principle ‘too big to fail’ is applied.

It seems a similar argument is given in respect to Delta Bank owned by Mykola Lahuna (fourth place by assets), which managed to borrow already over UAH 10 bn from the regulator.

As Capital earlier reported, one fifth of the banking system may be transferred under control of the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Ukraine.