The largest business groups of Ukraine badly service their loans, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has said, not disclosing the names of business groups.

"Excluding Privat Group, the share of bad debts of the top five largest business groups is 82%. With Privat it is 93!" Deputy Director of the Financial Stability Department of the NBU Yevhen Dubohryz said at the presentation of the fifth report on financial stability on Tuesday.

According to the document, the total volume of gross loans issued to the five largest business groups is about UAH 125 billion, or 14% of all loans of the corporate sector.

The National Bank said that the top ten business groups account for 21% of all loans, that the top twenty - 27%, while the share of bad loans they have is 79% and 76% respectively.

"We have a lot of loans issued to large borrowers or major business groups, and it is the largest business groups - debtors of Ukraine – that have the worst payment discipline," Dubohryz said.

He said that in the course of negotiations with borrowers and banks, the National Bank sees a negative trend that large unscrupulous borrowers are deliberately delaying the restructuring of debts, and sometimes require preferential terms from banks, for example, writing off part of the debt or zero interest for years with redemption at the end of the term.

"Generally speaking, debtors now have more power, especially opportunities, not to pay their debts, than banks when they work with these debtors," the representative of the National Bank said. He called for the adoption of laws on the protection of creditors and the reform of the judicial system.

"If the banks are not coordinated to settle the debts of large groups, these debts will never be returned," the NBU said in the new report.