A mission of the International Monetary Fund has arrived in Kyiv to continue its talks with the Ukrainian authorities on a new Stand-By Agreement.
“The mission has arrived in Kyiv and starts its work,”
Interfax-Ukraine learnt at the IMF Resident Representative Office in
Kyiv.
As reported, the mission plans to work in Ukraine from March 27 until April 10.
The IMF mission visited Kyiv January 29 through February 12 to
discuss economic policies that could be supported by the IMF with the
SBA. Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov said on
January 14 that Kyiv intended to open a new program of financial
cooperation with the IMF worth SDR 10 billion.
The previous Ukraine-IMF SBA, also worth SDR 10 billion, was formally
terminated in December 2012. It was opened late in July 2010, but the
country succeeded in getting two tranches worth a total of SDR 2.25
billion ($3.4 billion). The program was frozen at the stage of the
second review in the spring of 2011.
For a year and a half, Ukraine had been unsuccessfully trying to
persuade the IMF to drop its objections to the government’s subsidizing
natural gas tariffs for households until the completion of its gas talks
with Russia, but failed.
