The Devaluation Illusion in Ukrainian Banking Statistics: Assets and Liabilities in UAH vs USD Equivalent, 2008-2026
Description
This dataset pairs nominal hryvnia (UAH) figures for Ukrainian banking system assets and liabilities with their US dollar equivalent at the official exchange rate on each reporting date, from 1 January 2008 to 1 January 2026. The purpose is methodological. Ukraine's hryvnia has devalued substantially over this period (from about 5.05 UAH/USD in 2008 to about 44.85 UAH/USD in 2026, roughly a ninefold nominal depreciation), so any banking statistic expressed only in nominal UAH terms overstates the system's real growth to a reader unfamiliar with the exchange rate history. Total banking system assets grew from roughly 599 billion UAH to roughly 4,001 billion UAH over 2008-2026, a nominal increase of about 568%, while the same assets measured in USD equivalent moved from about 118.7 billion USD to about 89.2 billion USD, a decline of about 25%. A researcher or reviewer who sees only the UAH series risks drawing the opposite conclusion from the one the USD series supports. This dataset makes the comparison explicit and reusable: every UAH figure is matched one-to-one with its USD equivalent and with the exchange rate used for the conversion, so the illusion is visible and quantifiable rather than requiring separate reconstruction from raw NBU tables. A derived growth-index sheet (2008 = 100) is included to make the divergence between nominal and USD-equivalent growth immediately visible without further calculation. The methodology is not specific to banking and may be of interest to researchers working with nominal local-currency time series from any high-devaluation economy. METHODOLOGY & SOURCES Data were manually compiled from official statistics published by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). USD-equivalent figures use the official NBU exchange rate on the corresponding reporting date (1 January of each year), as published alongside the underlying asset and liability statistics. No other adjustments, such as inflation adjustment or purchasing power parity conversion, were applied; the dataset isolates the exchange-rate effect specifically. Sources accessed August 2026: - National Bank of Ukraine, Supervisory statistics - Key performance indicators of Ukrainian banks: https://bank.gov.ua/ua/statistic/supervision-statist - Minfin, Assets of Ukrainian banks (2008-2026): https://index.minfin.com.ua/ua/banks/stat/active/ CONTACT INFORMATION Illia Kyselov, PhD in Law Associate Professor, Department of Law, Bohdan Khmelnytsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine CMSA (R), FPWMP (R), and BIDA (R) (Corporate Finance Institute) Email: illiakyselov86@gmail.com The author is open to collaboration on Scopus-indexed publications and further research using Ukrainian economic and financial statistics. Inquiries regarding this dataset, potential co-authorship, or data requests are welcome.