Largely thanks to the recovery of the real economy, the situation of Russian banks has improved again. After month-on-month loan growth had quickly ground to a halt in late 2008, banks contributed to Russia’s deep economic slump in 2009. The share of nonperforming loans had tripled to 10% of...

Ukraine’s banking sector was strongly hit by the global economic crisis which began in September 2008 and triggered an extreme output contraction (–20%) in the first quarter of 2009 and a sharp depreciation of the Ukrainian hryvnia (–35%). Loss of confidence in the banking sector and...

Pushed by expanding income (on the back of rising oil prices) and by rapid external debt accumulation, the Kazakh banking sector featured one of the most dynamic credit booms in CESEE until 2007. Following the U.S. subprime crisis, banks’ access to external funding plummeted and credit...

Following a sharp recession in 2009, the Ukrainian economy recovered in 2010 and 2011. In particular in 2011, domestic demand-led growth was accompanied by widening external imbalances. The economy’s external vulnerabilities – related to the current account deficit (2011: 5.6% of GDP) and...

This study was drafted during the preparation of the Fifth Joint High-Level Eurosystem – Bank of Russia Seminar hosted by the OeNB in Vienna on March 11–12, 2009. The first part of the study illustrates developments in the euro area, where the financial sector suffered to some extent from...

This study analyzes the functions and development of the Belarusian banking system in recent years, with a special focus on the current situation, which is characterized by a sharp deterioration of the country’s terms of trade in early 2007. Since the mid-1990s, the “Belarusian economic...

This paper gives an overview and assessment of the evolution of the Ukrainian banking sector since the outset of transition, focusing on the most recent developments. While the 1990s saw turbulent changes against the backdrop of continuous economic contraction, the Ukrainian banking sector has...