BSTDB Helps Green Financing and Post-pandemic Recovery of SMEs in Ukraine

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) is providing a EUR 30 million loan to a leading Ukrainian Ukrgasbank to promote green financing for energy efficiency, renewable energy and other environmentally friendly projects, thus reducing the carbon footprint in the Ukrainian industry. The BSTDB loan can be also used to help Ukrainian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to recover after the pandemic crisis.

“We are pleased to team up with Ukrgasbank, a well-positioned “green” bank, to promote sustainable and green solutions in Ukraine. Given the challenging business conditions amid the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, the BSTDB financing will contribute to a better resilience of the SME sector, saving jobs and helping maintain income generation in the country”, said Dmitry Pankin, BSTDB President.

“Our partnership with BSTDB is especially important today when the Ukrainian economy is facing the aftermath of the pandemic. It targets our two strategic priorities at a time – supporting green initiative and SME sector which proved the most vulnerable in the face of COVID-19. We are sure that our joint input will help our economy on a recovery path”, said Andrii Kravets, Acting Chairman of the Management Board of UKRGASBANK.

Ukrgasbank is a leading green bank of Ukraine, focused on sustainability. It is at TOP-5 Ukrainian banks  by assets. Since 2009, the majority shareholder (94.94%) is the State of Ukraine represented by the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. As of end-2019, the share of green loans in the Bank's loan portfolio is about 30%. The Bank is rated at B/Stable by Fitch.

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) is an international financial institution established by Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The BSTDB headquarters are in Thessaloniki, Greece. BSTDB supports economic development and regional cooperation by providing loans, credit lines, equity and guarantees for projects and trade financing in the public and private sectors in its member countries. The authorized capital of the Bank is EUR 3.45 billion. BSTDB is rated long-term “A-” by Standard and Poor’s and “A2” by Moody’s. For information on BSTDB, visit www.bstdb.org.

08.10.2020