Parliamentary Deputy Mykola Azarov of the Party of the Regions forecasts that Ukraine's GDP will fall by 23-24 percent in 2009.

“We will most likely have a fall of 23-24 percent in GDP the year. I consider such a fall catastrophic,” Azarov said.

According to him, a GDP growth on the back of the agro-industrial sector should not be expected in 2009 because the forecast grain harvest for 2009 is 10 million tons less than the 2008 harvest.

“This year, agricultural enterprises will harvest about 10 million tons less than they harvested last year,” Azarov said.

According to Azarov, unprofessional policies of the Cabinet of Ministers have essentially thrown Ukraine back by 10 years because neither a growth nor a fall in GDP is forecast for 2010 and the GDP will subsequently grow by 2-3 percent per year.

“We have lost 10 years of development this year,” Azarov said.

He added that he was concerned about the stability of the hryvnia because the government's policy of using the country's foreign-currency reserves to finance settlements for natural gas and printing money to finance budget expenditures were unacceptable.

At the same time, he expressed the hope that the hryvnia would not collapse again because of these policies.

Azarov repeated his call for the Cabinet of Ministers to resign for lack of professionalism.

“There is nobody to talk to in the government. There is really nobody to talk to professionally,” Azarov said.

According to him, the government's desire to deflect attention from acute social problems is being masked with populist proposals such as abolition of the immunity of parliamentary deputies.

“In its feverish search for ways of deflecting the society's attention from such burning and topical issues as raising the minimum social standards of our citizens, the government has thought of something: the parliamentary faction of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc is saying, ‘Let us raise the issue of the immunity of parliamentary deputies,'“ Azarov said.

According to Azarov, the Party of the Regions will insist on consideration of all other issues only after social standards are raised.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the International Monetary Fund has forecast that Ukraine's GDP will fall by up to 12 percent in 2009.