IMF Mission To Return To Ukraine In Matter Of Weeks - Finance Minister

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th October, 2019) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission to Ukraine will return to the country in a matter of weeks in order to continue negotiations regarding a new three-year loan, Finance Minister Oksana Markarova said on Friday.

"The IMF mission will come back in the nearest weeks to Kiev," Markarova said during a discussion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Markarova said the Ukrainian leadership will discuss the details of the possible loan and will then inform the IMF as to what it intends to do.

An IMF delegation visited Ukraine September 12-26 to assess the situation regarding offering a new loan. Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said after the meeting that a loan may be signed in December.

Makarova said that current talks with the IMF on the new loan are moving forward faster than talks regarding previous loans.

"This is the third program I am taking part in negotiating with the IMF and ... we are moving in these discussions faster than last year and three years before," Markarova said.

In December 2018, the IMF approved a $3.9 billion stand-by loan program for Ukraine for 14 months. Of this sum, $1.4 billion was transferred in December, and the remaining funds were to be allocated based on semiannual reviews.

Initially, Kiev expected to receive the next IMF tranche in May, but the IMF postponed the transfer until after the new Ukrainian government was formed. The stand-by program was thus halted and the sides started negotiating a new agreement to replace the previous deal.