Golovchenko: Belarus’ banking system meets all commitments for H1 2026

The Belarusian banking system has fulfilled all its commitments for the first half of the year, Roman Golovchenko, Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Belarus, told the media ahead of an expanded board meeting of the National Bank on 30 July, BelTA has learned.

“The targets are traditionally challenging, but I am pleased to note that the National Bank and the banking system have met all their commitments for the first half of the year, and not just met them, but exceeded them across all key objectives. The situation has improved compared to the first quarter. The banking system has mobilized in line with the assigned tasks, and today we are quite satisfied with the state of affairs. We see positive results and expect them to continue through the end of the year,” said Roman Golovchenko.

During the meeting, he noted that since March, the country’s economy has shown a certain recovery trend, reflected in GDP turning positive at 1.5%. “I believe this was also facilitated by our work in shaping interest rate policy aimed at a gradual reduction of interest rates in the economy, which naturally increases the availability of credit resources. Since May, capital investment has been recovering, with growth of 4.1% in the first half of the year,” said Roman Golovchenko. “The main contribution to this growth still comes from bank lending.”

According to him, it is positive that enterprises are actively investing in technological upgrades: based on the first-half results, spending on the acquisition of machinery and equipment, the active part of investment, grew by almost 9.5%.

Retail trade also showed fairly active growth of 7.6% over the six months. “Non-food products are growing more actively, mainly passenger cars, given the credit support provided in this area,” Roman Golovchenko said.

“As a result, all monetary policy targets for 2026, approved by the presidential decree, are being met. Inflation continues to slow down and is below the target trajectory. In June, the annual growth in consumer prices stood at 4.3%, down from 6.8% in December 2025. Analyzing the components and structure of inflation, we can note that this slowdown is structural rather than seasonal, as in previous years,” said Roman Golovchenko. “Given the dynamics of these processes, a decision was made in June to cut the refinancing rate by 50 basis points, to 9.25% per annum.”

In the first half of the year, the banking system provided significant support to exporters: the volume of foreign trade payments for goods and services processed by Belarusian banks amounted to $49 billion, an increase of more than $3 billion compared to the same period last year.

“The foreign exchange market remains stable. The net supply of foreign currency by all participants amounted to $800 million. International reserve assets stood at $14.2 billion as of 1 July, covering three months of imports, an internationally recognized safety benchmark,” Roman Golovchenko emphasized.

According to him, the key indicators of the banking and payment system’s sustainable functioning, including the share of non-performing assets in banks and the capital adequacy ratio, are within safe limits. The total profit of banks, including the Development Bank, for the first half of the year amounted to nearly Br2 billion.

“Decent results have been achieved in building the banks’ resource base, and the trend toward de-dollarization of the economy continues: in the first half of the year, the ruble share in broad money increased by another 3.2%, reaching 68.3%. At the same time, it is encouraging that the structure of ruble resources is also changing qualitatively, driven by more active growth in long-term deposits. We see with satisfaction that all banks have joined the effort to build a domestic market for long-term money. The growth of irrevocable household deposits in national currency with terms over one year amounted to 27.7%, while the volume of deposits with terms over three years increased 3.8 times,” Roman Golovchenko noted.