You're reading: Tigipko, Yaroshenko leave for Washington to hold talks with IMF

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Social Policy Minister Serhiy Tigipko and Finance Minister Fedir Yaroshenko left for Washington on Wednesday to hold talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Vitaliy Lukyanenko, the spokesman for the Ukrainian prime minister, has said.

"They left for Washington today for talks with the IMF," he told Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

Lukyanenko said Tigipko and Yaroshenko would hold consultations with the IMF and state the position of the Ukrainian government.

An IMF mission arrived in Kyiv on Oct. 25 and planned to complete its work on November 4.

The IMF decided to renew its loan partnership with Ukraine in the summer of 2010 through a new stand-by program. In late July 2010, Kyiv received the first tranche of SDR 1.25 billion under the new program.

The IMF decided in December to allocate a second tranche worth SDR 1 billion.

The program foresaw future quarterly allocation of tranches, each worth SDR 1 billion, with the exception of the last tranche, which was to be worth SDR 750 million.

However, an IMF mission that worked in Kyiv in March 2011 could not recommend to the IMF Executive Board that it approve another tranche for Ukraine.

The IMF had expected Ukraine to approve pension reform and settle the problem of low prices of natural gas for households.

The next visit of the International Monetary Fund’s mission to Ukraine was first scheduled for Aug. 29 through Sept. 9, but was then postponed until late October 2011.

Ukraine’s government said that due to the delay in financing, two tranches of the stand-by loan could be combined, which would help replenish the foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank of Ukraine with about $3 billion.