Capital expenditures decreased 2% year-on-year, totaling $258 million for the fourth quarter. And CapEx intensity on a 12-month basis has come in at 17.6%, in line with our guidance. Let’s look at our portfolio country by country. In Ukraine, Kyivstar achieved a full year double digit growth in local currency. This success reflects the team’s dedication to keeping Ukraine and its citizens connected while also maintaining robust business performance. In our central and South Asian markets, local currency service revenue growth of the year varied in between 14.6% in Bangladesh to 23.7% in Pakistan. As for EBITDA performance, excluding Ukraine, we saw local currency EBITDA growth ranging from 14.8% in Uzbekistan to an impressive 30% in Kazakhstan.
Very balanced performance across our countries. Looking specifically to Q4 in next page, you will see that year-on-year local currency service revenue growth range from 8.6% in Bangladesh to 28.5% in Uzbekistan. Again, from an EBITDA perspective, excluding Uzbekistan and Ukraine, local currency EBITDA grew at rates ranging from 23.3% in Pakistan to 30.1% in Kazakhstan. And EBITDA expansion is visible in all the markets. Slide 12 takes us a little bit back into the history. And you see how from 2020 to ‘23, the growth patterns of our different companies and on average has varied and systematically now beating the inflation. Minus 2% decline in 2020 in local currencies expanded to 10% in ‘21, 13% to ‘22, and in ‘23 we have reached 18%.
As the dotted line symbolizes inflation, you can see that this reflects a nominal GDP aligned growth rate for our markets. Where is the growth coming from? Let’s look into our 4G and Multiplay highlights. During the year, 4G users were up 11% to $94 million in Q4. 4G penetration rose 6 percentage points to 60%, bringing us ever closer to our group target of 70%. We see compounding effect of 4G for all and digital operator strategies in our Multiplay segment. Expanding 4G access enables us to convert more single player users to Multiplay subscribers. Multiplay subscribers use both 4G connectivity and digital products, they spend more time on our applications, they stay longer with our services, churn less and drive higher revenue generation.
In Q4, Multiplay segment revenue represented 33% of our group total revenues and grew 35% year-on-year. ARPU growth from different countries ranged from 5% to 25% year-on-year in local currency. Let’s look into Kyivstar in more detail. Kyivstar achieved double-digit growth in both local currency revenue and service revenue for the entire year of 2023. This growth was bolstered by an uptick in 4G penetration and increase in customers opting for both double-play and multi-play services. VEON and Kyivstar are committed to supporting Ukraine, both in our everyday efforts to keep Ukraine and Ukrainians connected and with our long-term commitment to invest in rebuilding Ukraine’s mobile telecoms infrastructure. In 2023, CapEx increased 7% year-on-year, and Kyivstar reconnected 190 communities to its 4G network in 2023.
15 of them were reconnected multiple times. Kyivstar has also made significant progress to ensure network resilience with power storage and generation capacities and capabilities installed across key sites. As part of its 4G Everywhere strategy, Kyivstar upgraded approximately 4,000 4G base stations, established 1,000 new 4G sites throughout ‘23, and upgraded many sites to battery power, which could last up to 72 hours in the middle of a war. Kyivstar continues to grow its 4G user base, reaching 14.3 million in fourth quarter, rising 60% of its customer base. Helsi is furthest along in terms of our digital healthcare offerings across our portfolio. It provides online consultations with medical professionals and is a vital part of Kyivstar’s digital operator portfolio.
Helsi Ukraine continues to power digital healthcare in Ukraine with more than 27 million registered patients, 10% year-on-year growth, having access to almost 1,600 active healthcare institutions, 37% year-on-year growth, and more than 37,000 specialists active on the platform, 20% year-on-year growth. Helsi mobile app downloads increased 43% year-on-year and reached 19 million in the fourth quarter, helping our clients to book 2 million appointments through the platform during the reported fourth quarter, which is 39% more than the last year. Let me pause here for a second and share with you few points regarding Ukraine. We are fully committed to Ukraine. We stand with our choice. The Ukrainian people and their future is our future, our people.
We are a vital provider of communication and we play a critical role in ensuring digital services to the country. We remain actively engaged with Ukrainian officials. A delegation from VEON, including myself and Secretary Pompeo, visited Kyiv recently and we are in constant coordination with them to help ensure that Kyivstar continues to deliver vital communication services and addresses any possible concerns Ukrainian government may have. Moving to Pakistan. Jazz, our operating company in Pakistan, accelerated its growth despite the challenging macroeconomic environment in 2023. Jazz’s successful execution of the digital operator strategy helped drive ‘23 total revenue growth of 23% and EBITDA growth of 24%. In Q4, 4G user base reached almost 44 million, a year-on-year increase of 6% and a penetration rate of 62% among customer base.
We are enabling more and more users into Multiplay users who account for 29% of operators’ monthly active user base. With 3 times, 2 times the ARPU of voice-only users, Jazz’s Multiplay customers generated 54% of operators revenues in consumer segment, which is up 10.5 percentage points compared to last year. With JazzCash, Pakistan’s most popular financial services app, and Tamasha, the country’s leading video streaming application, Jazz is a perfect example of how our digital operator strategy is succeeding at creating growth. JazzCash and Mobilink Bank continue to scale rapidly and profitably. Mobilink’s gross loan portfolio expanded 28% year-on-year, while gross deposits rose an outstanding 188% year-on-year. Average loan size increased 31% at Mobilink Bank.
