IMF mission to work in Ukraine from March 27 until April 10

A mission of the International Monetary Fund will work in Ukraine from March 27 until April 10 to continue the negotiations on a new stand-by agreement (SBA).

The IMF Resident Representative Office in Kyiv reported this, referring to Resident Representative in Ukraine Max Alier. As we have reported, 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 Vice Premier Serhiy Arbuzov said in January that Kyiv intended to open a new program of financial cooperation with the IMF worth around 15 billion U.S. dollars. The previous Ukraine-IMF stand-by arrangement, also worth 15 billion dollars, was formally terminated in December. It was opened in July 2010, but the country got only two tranches worth a total of 3.4 billion dollars. The program was frozen at the stage of the second review in the spring of 2011. For 18 months, 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.