Ministry of Finance, EBRD and Oshchadbank are Preparing for Signing Mandate Letter on Long-Rerm Financing

On June 15, the Minister of Finance of Ukraine Sergii Marchenko met with the EBRD Managing Director for Financial Institutions Francis Malige.

Deputy Minister of Finance Yuriy Draganchuk, EBRD Managing Director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus Matteo Patrone, EBRD Director for Financial Institutions for the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe Aleksandra Vukosavljevic also attended the meeting.

The main topics for discussion were the reform of the state-owned banks of Ukraine, corporate governance reform, privatization of Oshchadbank, and updating the approach to the selection of independent members of the supervisory boards of state-owned banks.

"The Ministry of Finance with international experts updated the Strategic Principles for Reforming State-Owned Banks, including development strategies for each such Bank until 2024. Based on this, the Main activities of Oshchadbank, PrivatBank, and Ukreximbank in 2021-2024 were prepared and approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine", Sergii Marchenko noted.

The Minister of Finance of Ukraine emphasized that today, on June 15, 2021, the updated Strategy of "Oschadbank" development for 2021-2024 was submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

"The priority of the Strategy is to overcome the crisis. The Bank will focus on the preservation of its business and support of financial solvency. In the long term, Oschadbank should become a leader in the market due to qualitative service and competitive products. Also, the Strategy provides a strong presence in the private sector - more than 80% of the loan portfolio from private businesses ", - said Sergii Marchenko.

Yuriy Draganchuk said that in the coming days the Parliament is expected to adopt the law aimed at the entry of Oschadbank in the Deposit Guarantee Fund, which will provide one of the essential conditions for the continuation of successful cooperation with the EBRD.

Oschadbank, the Ministry of Finance, and the EBRD are preparing for signing a mandate letter. It is about future cooperation and provision by the EBRD of long-term financing in the form of a subordinated loan with a conversion option to Oschadbank.

During the meeting, the Minister told about the development of three documents to establish a legal procedure for the Ministry of Finance to conduct an annual assessment of the Supervisory Board of State-owned Banks Evaluation Procedure, Terms of Reference for the independent external expert, the Selection Procedure for the independent external expert. The assessment is carried out to improve the quality of the Supervisory Board as a management body of the bank and its effectiveness, increasing the level of corporate governance in the bank.