World Bank approves loans to strengthen Ukraine's banking system

The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors on Thursday approved a 500 million U.S. dollars operation to finance a program of high-priority reform measures in Ukraine's banking sector.
"The package of reforms supported by this operation will help improve the performance of Ukraine's banking system and its resilience to both domestic and external risks," said Qimiao Fan, World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine.
"We are helping the Ukrainian authorities to implement an urgent set of measures aimed at returning the country to a sustainable growth path. Maintaining efficient and stable operations of the banking system is a critical part of this reform agenda, which the World Bank will continue to support through this loan and other instruments," he said.
In particular, reform measures supported by this loan, the first in a series of two, will strengthen the financial, operational and regulatory capacity of the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) for the resolution of insolvent banks.
The operation will also support efforts to improve the solvency of the banking system through independent diagnostic assessments of the largest 35 banks in the country. It will also assist the authorities in strengthening the supervisory framework to make the banking sector more efficient, transparent and resilient.
This operation is part of the World Bank Group's broader crisis-response support package announced in March this year, which aims to provide Ukraine with up to 3.5 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2014.