The role of the banking sector in enhancing investment activity in Ukraine amid post-war recovery

The topic is relevant because Ukraine’s post-war economic recovery requires large-scale investment support that far exceeds the financial resources available to the state and businesses. In these circumstances, the banking sector acts as a key intermediary capable of accumulating household savings and temporarily free funds of enterprises and directing them into productive financing. At the same time, statistics for 2022–2025 reveal a contradictory trend: the banking system maintained payment continuity and increased its resource base, capital, and profitability, while capital investment grew by 35.1% in 2024, while business loan growth was substantially lower. A significant portion of banking resources remains concentrated in highly liquid assets, government securities, and NBU deposit certificates, which ensures financial stability but limits the transformation of liquidity into investment lending. This creates a scientific problem: the mismatch between the banking sector’s accumulated financial potential and its actual contribution to investment activity in the context of post-war recovery. The article aims to substantiate the banking sector’s role in enhancing investment activity in Ukraine amid post-war recovery by assessing the dynamics and structure of bank lending and investment in 2022–2025 and identifying ways to strengthen banks’ participation in financing investment processes. Achieving this purpose requires generalizing theoretical approaches to defining the role of the banking sector in investment activity, analyzing the dynamics of capital investment and business lending, assessing the impact of state lending support programs, identifying the factors restraining the transformation of banking resources into investment lending, and substantiating ways of strengthening the role of banks in financing post-war economic recovery. The study examines the relationship between investment activity and bank financing using structural and dynamic analysis and the graphical method. The study draws on statistical and analytical materials from the NBU, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, and the Entrepreneurship Development Fund for 2022–2025. The main results show a gap between capital investment and business lending, indicating that investment is growing faster than bank financing. The study also demonstrates the compensatory role of state programs. The study identifies structural factors behind the gap, particularly the attractiveness of risk-free government securities and deposit certificates, the short planning horizon, and wartime lending risks. The paper substantiates three groups of measures to enhance banks’ investment activity: regulatory, institutional, and risk-related. The practical significance of the results lies in their potential use by public authorities and bank management in formulating investment lending policy under post-war recovery. Keywords: banking sector, investment activity, post-war recovery, business lending, capital investment, state support programs, financial stability.