The state budget lacks USD 3 billion due to the fact that Ukraine did not receive the planned borrowings. This was announced in an interview with BBC News Ukraine by Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko.
At the same time, he called the situation “difficult, but controllable.”
“I don’t wear pink glasses and don’t hang, as they say, noodles on ears and I don’t want to deceive you. Not everything is so simple with us. There are delays, difficulties … And we are thinking how to close this month, how to finance the next. The situation is not easy, absolutely not easy. I’m not deceiving anyone. I’m just saying that it so happened that we haven’t received a significant amount of funds yet. We are talking about more than USD 3 billion, which were included in our budget [more than 85 billion hryvnias at today’s exchange rate – ed.],” Marchenko stressed.
The head of the Ministry of Finance clarified that he was calling the amount in dollars, since it is about “external borrowings that have not yet arrived in our accounts.”
At the same time, the minister assured that the Government has “a plan in case of events A, B and C – how we act, how to end this year, so that we finance all the expenses provided for in the budget to the maximum.”
Marchenko recalled that in June this year, Ukraine received more than USD 2 billion of the first tranche from the International Monetary Fund under the stand-by program. It was expected that two more portions of the loan would be received by the end of this year, but this has not happened so far.
At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Finance said that there was progress in the negotiations with the IMF (in particular, on the key parameters of the state budget for 2021).
Marchenko also voiced a few more questions necessary for the IMF to resume lending to Ukraine. They relate to the National Bank and the functioning of the anti-corruption bureau.
The minister still does not rule out the possibility of receiving the next tranche from the IMF by the end of the year, but does not consider this the most likely scenario.
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