Recovery in mortgage lending is hindered by a moratorium on taking liens, non-transparency of the primary housing market and the fragility of the right of investors, according to the Financial Stability Report of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).
“The market needs to be made, on the one hand, more transparent, and on the other, it needs to be regulated in such a way that banks are comfortable lending to primary housing, ensuring the rights of lenders,” First Deputy Governor of the NBU Kateryna Rozhkova said during the presentation of the regulator’s report in Kyiv on Tuesday.
According to her, the barriers in the current legislation negatively affect the margin level of developers, which reduces the potential development of mortgage lending.
“We are working to amend the law and hope to adopt it as soon as possible in order to make the market more attractive to all players,” Rozhkova said.
“We really believe that the situation with Ukrbud undermines the confidence of customers and investors in this sector. There is no doubt about that. This is one of the reasons why we paid more attention to this issue in our report,” she said.
At the same time, developers surveyed by the NBU predict the intensification of mortgage lending in the next three years.
“Under favorable conditions, next year banks plan to provide 15% more mortgage loans than a year ago,” the NBU said.
Retail trade in comparable prices (both by legal entities and individual entrepreneurs) in Ukraine in January-November 2019 grew by 10.4% year-over-year, the country’s State Statistics Service said on Friday.
In November 2019 alone, retail trade increased by 2.8% from October 2019 and by 12.8% from November 2018.
The highest retail trade growth in January-November 2019 year-over-year was recorded in Kyiv region (by 19.8%), Vinnytsia region (by 18.9%), Ternopil region (by 17.2%), and Luhansk region (by 16.5%).
The State Statistics Service says its report does not include data from temporarily occupied territories, namely the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol and certain districts in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Irish-registered low-cost airline Ryanair (Dublin) is to launch flights from Lviv to Poznan (Poland) from April 1, 2020. Such flights will be operated twice a week – on Wednesdays and Sundays, according to information in the airline’s booking system. The price starts from EUR22.05 (one way).
As reported, with the summer flight schedule to be launched late in March 2020, Ryanair will cease operating flights from Kyiv to Nuremberg (Germany) and Skavsеa (100 km southwest of Stockholm, Sweden).
Ryanair daily carries out more than 2,000 flights to/from 236 airports. In the past financial year, the company transported 130.3 million passengers. Its fleet has 460 Boeing-737 aircraft.
The company entered the Ukrainian market in 2018.
Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada has returned bill No. 2285-d on the public regulation of activities in the sphere of organization of gambling for refining by the committee and preparing it for repeated first reading. The document was registered in parliament on December 18.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that MPs did not support the bill at first reading casting only 213 votes with at least 226 required, while 243 MPs backed the decision to send the document for repeated first reading.
As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers registered bill No. 2285 in the parliament, and MPs submitted seven more alternative documents, among is finalized bill No. 2285-d, authored by MP Oleksandr Dubinsky (the Servant of the People parliamentary faction).
The bill proposes to limit the number of licenses for gambling establishments. In addition, it is proposed to establish mandatory verification of players when accepting bets and registering winners in the online monitoring system.
At the same time, the government bill proposes to establish special gambling zones for casinos and slot machines: the territory of five-star hotels for casinos and three star and higher rated hotels for slot machines.
The law on the national budget for 2020 provides for revenues from licenses in the field of gambling in the amount of UAH 4.4 billion, which will be sent to the budget’s special fund, and everything that exceeds the amount specified in the law will be spent on subventions to local budgets to finance various educational and healthcare programs.
National bank of Ukraine’s official rates as of 21/12/19
Source: National Bank of Ukraine
Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of December 21
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
