KIEV: IMF is also ready to complete the second review of the Extended Fund Facility on cooperation with Ukraine, endorsed in March 2015. Ukraine’s key lender, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), says it is ready to continue cooperation with a newly formed Ukrainian government, which was approved by Ukraine’s Parliament on April 14, 2016. “We stand ready to continue support of Ukraine. We look forward to talking with the new government,” Director of the IMF’s European Department Poul Thomsen said at a briefing in Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 15.
The IMF is also ready to complete the second review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) on cooperation with Ukraine, which was endorsed in March 2015, provided the new government abides by the EFF’s provisions.
The formation of the new government was a way out of the deep political crisis seen by Ukraine in the past few months and became possible after the creation of a new parliamentary coalition on the basis of two largest parliamentary factions – the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko and the People’s Front whose leader is former PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Outlining the new government’s tasks, President Poroshenko said there was no alternative to cooperation with the IMF. The four-year EFF program worth about USD 17.5 billion originally foresaw quarterly revisions of the program, the issue of four tranches to Kyiv in 2015, another four in 2016. However, at present, the country has received only the first tranche worth USD 5 billion on March 13, 2015, and the second one worth USD 1.7 billion arrived on August 4, 2015.
The second review is currently under way, as Ukraine and the IMF are in talks on a large range of issues, including monetary, banking, anti-corruption policy, pension reform, and privatization. The result of the review should be a memorandum, which is to be approved by the Ukrainian government and the IMF’s Executive Board. The endorsement of the memorandum will pave the way for the third tranche worth USD 1.7 billion.
