KIEV, March 31 – Ukrainian banks will start cutting mortgage interest rates no earlier than in 2012, according to Anton Shaperenkov, the director of the retail business department at Kiev-based VAB Bank.

"This year interest rates on mortgage credits, not taking into account additional fees associated with the opening of credits, will be high, at 25-30% per annum. This is explained by the expensiveness of the attraction of long-term loans in the national currency. A cut in rates will be possible no earlier than 2012, when banks will not have to form large reserves for active transactions due to non-payments by clients on credits, as they do now, and when they instead start seeing profits," he told Interfax-Ukraine.