On June 15, Minister of Finance Serhii Marchenko held a meeting with Francis Malige, Managing Director, Financial Institutions for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The meeting was attended by Deputy Minister of Finance Yuriy Draganchuk, EBRD Managing Director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus Matteo Patrone and Aleksandra Vukosavljević EBRD Associate Director, Western Balkans and Eastern Europe.

The conversation revolved around key topics, namely, the reform of state-owned banks of Ukraine, corporate governance reform, privatization of JSC “Oschadbank”, and renewal of the approach to the selection of independent members of state banks' supervisory boards.

"The Ministry of Finance together with international experts has updated the Strategic Principles for Reforming State-Owned Banks, which includes development strategies for each such Bank until 2024. Based on this, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine prepared and approved the main activities of Oschadbank, PrivatBank and Ukreximbank in 2021-2024," said Serhii Marchenko.

The Minister of Finance of Ukraine stressed that today, June 15, 2021, an updated Development Strategy of JSC "Oschadbank" for 2021-2024 was submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers. "The priority of the Strategy is to overcome the crisis. The bank will focus on maintaining its business and financial capacity. In the long term, JSC "Oschadbank" will become a market leader due to quality service and competitive products. The Strategy also envisages a strong presence in the private sector - more than 80% of the loan portfolio from private business, "Serhii Marchenko underscored.

Yuriy Draganchuk, Deputy Minister of Finance noted that the draft law registered in the Verkhovna Rada and expected to be adopted in the coming days is aimed at joining JSC "Oschadbank" to the Deposit Guarantee Fund, which will ensure fulfilment of one of the important conditions for continued successful cooperation with the EBRD. JSC "Oschadbank", the Ministry of Finance and the EBRD are preparing to sign a mandate letter on the terms of future cooperation and provide the EBRD with long-term financing in the form of a subordinated loan with the possibility of conversion into Oschadbank shares.

During the meeting, the Minister spoke about the drafting of three documents to establish a legal procedure for the Ministry of Finance to annually evaluate the performance of the Supervisory Board of state banks: Evaluation Procedure, Terms of Reference for Independent External Expert, Selection Procedure for Independent External Expert. The evaluation is conducted in order to improve the quality of the supervisory board as a governing body of the bank and its efficiency, increase the level of corporate governance in the bank