The next mission from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to visit Ukraine in October this year, Acting Finance Minister Ihor Umansky has said.
He told reporters on Wednesday that the mission would determine how a memorandum between Ukraine and the IMF had been implemented.
“If these causes [behind the incomplete implementation of the memorandum] are objective, rather than subjective, I think the mission will have all grounds to propose that the [IMF] Executive Board continue work [with Ukraine],” Umansky said.
As reported, Ukraine’s Presidential Secretariat predicted earlier that the country would face difficulties winning the disbursal of the next tranche of the IMF’s loan to Ukraine.
“My talks with the [IMF] mission chief allow me to conclude that they are greatly disappointed at the way Ukraine is acting, as the country is not only failing to comply with the obligations it had undertaken, but is misinforming [the fund] about their implementation,” said the secretariat’s first deputy head, Oleksandr Shlapak.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko previously said that the continuation of Ukraine’s cooperation with the IMF could be jeopardized, as the Ukrainian government had not implemented five of the six conditions of the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA).
Ukraine has already received $10.5 billion under the SBA with the IMF, and another $6 billion has yet to be allocated, including the $3.8 billion that is to be transferred to Ukraine by the end of this year.
IMF experts led by IMF Mission Chief in Ukraine Ceyla Pazarbasioglu arrived in Ukraine last week to draft and analyze Ukraine’s state budget for 2010. Their visit should have served as preparations for the IMF mission’s arrival in the country late in October in order to hold talks on the completion of the third review of the SBA and the possible allocation of the next tranche of the fund’s loan.
