Minister of Economy and Finance Daniele Franco confirmed an intention of the Italian government to provide Ukraine with a loan of EUR 200 million, Finance Minister of Ukraine Serhiy Marchenko said in an interview with Italian Corriere della sera following the recent talks in Washington at the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
“We are negotiating to receive funds on concessional terms: at 1% per annum, with a maturity of 15 years. In my opinion, other countries can also offer us loans on such concessional terms. Such financing would certainly help us,” Marchenko said.
He also thanked Italy, which was the first of all countries to provide Ukraine with EUR 110 million on grant terms at the very beginning of the war unleashed by Russia.
The Ukrainian Finance Minister said that the preparation of an agreement on the next EUR 150 million loan from Germany, which will help support Ukraine’s macro-financial stability, has also recently begun.
According to him, only last week Germany provided a EUR 150 million loan to support small and medium-sized businesses, an agreement on which was reached back in March 2020.
“Minister Christian Lindner also noted that they are considering providing us with military support in the amount of EUR 1 billion, but we expected from Germany no less financial support than that provided to us by the UK, Canada or the United States,” Marchenko said.
According to him, Kyiv has high hopes for funding from the IMF managed account. “We encourage partner countries to consider reallocating 10% of their Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) that they received from the IMF in August 2021 and have not yet used. We are mainly targeting EU countries. However, specific rules should be agreed with the European Union and European Central Bank (ECB),” the Minister of Finance explained.
According to him, the EU countries will consider this issue, as there may be some restrictions on the use of SDRs by the ECB.
“But I think that countries will try to find a legal solution with the ECB to make SDRs available to Ukraine. The IMF is also working with other countries to find out how the allocated SDR quotas can be used to support Ukraine,” the minister said.
As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, in his speech at the Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, indicated that the country needs support of up to $7 billion monthly, and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal noted that up to $5 billion is needed monthly to cover the budget deficit.
11 modern passenger buses from Riga and humanitarian aid have arrived in Kyiv, Mayor of the Ukrainian capital Vitaliy Klitschko said.
“Friends! Today, our Latvian partners, a delegation from the Riga Mayor’s Office, donated 11 modern passenger buses to Kyiv as assistance. And also humanitarian aid,” the mayor of Kyiv wrote on his telegram channel on Saturday.
Klitschko thanked Vice Mayor of Riga Edwards Smiltens for his visit to personally convey this assistance. “For us, this is evidence of Latvia’s solidarity with Ukraine, its capital, with the Ukrainian people in our struggle for our independence and freedom,” he said.
Each bus has a print of a symbolic hugging mural created in Riga by a Latvian artist.
The city authorities of Riga are considering the possibility of transferring more than 30 buses to Kyiv.
On April 28, 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine received information from foreign partners that citizens of Ukraine must have a Green Card policy when crossing the Polish border, this practice, apparently, will be extended to borders with other countries, noted on the NBU website.
In this regard, the regulator recommends that Ukrainian citizens traveling abroad in their own car purchase a Green Card policy.
As reported, since the beginning of the war, Ukrainians had the right to cross the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova in their own cars without a Green Card policy.
“We are grateful to all the countries that were sympathetic to the situation in which the citizens of Ukraine found themselves. At the beginning of the war, most of them had no opportunity to purchase Green Card policies, going abroad in search of a safe place. Insurers, together with the MTIBU, have established the process of transporting policies to the relocated offices of insurance companies and to the border. They have also worked out the optimal conditions for acquiring and using such a policy,” says Olga Maksimchuk, director of the Department for Supervision of the Non-Banking Financial Services Market of the NBU, whose words are quoted in the message.
Today, you can conclude an international insurance contract “Green Card” with a 50% discount for a period of 15 days and 1 month from Ukrainian insurers. The cost of the policy depends on the type of vehicle, the country of visit and the duration of the insurance contract. The price for the “Green Card” insurance policy is determined by the MTIBU and is the same for all insurers. The cost of the Green Card policy in Ukraine is lower than in most countries.
In addition, the process of obtaining a “Green Card” has been significantly simplified due to martial law. Thus, online issuance of “Green Card” policies has been introduced through the generation of the corresponding pdf-files (electronic policy). Member countries of the “Green Card” system recognize Ukrainian electronic policies, they do not need to be printed out and can be presented from any gadget.
“Green Card” – an insurance certificate of a single form, used in the member countries of the international automobile insurance system “Green Card”.
Dynamics of changes in population of Ukraine from 1991-2022
SSC of Ukraine
The relevant bill will be considered in the Bundestag.
If adopted, from June 1, 2022, citizens of Ukraine who have received a residence permit in accordance with the law on the stay of foreigners will receive social assistance in the amount of 449 euros. Now the amount of payments is about 300 euros. More than 400,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in Germany, and about 3,000 more are arriving every day, according to the Ukraine Round Table held in Berlin on Monday with the participation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
According to the information, more than 60 thousand Ukrainian schoolchildren are already studying in Germany, and graduates of Ukrainian schools were allowed to enter German universities without a diploma. According to the UN data, as of 13:00 on April 24, a total of 5.23 million people left Ukraine since the beginning of the war (excluding the entry flow), of which 2.91 million went to Poland, 843.74 thousand to Romania and Moldova. , Russia – 605.82 thousand, Hungary – 492.98 thousand, Slovakia – 355.59 thousand, Belarus – 24.48 thousand.
At the same time, according to the State Border Service, 1.17 million people have entered Ukraine by this date since February 28.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) is recording the adaptation and gradual recovery of the economy after its collapse in the first weeks of the war, said Volodymyr Lepushinsky, director of the NBU’s Department of Monetary Policy and Economic Analysis.
“It’s hard for the economy, but it adapts and works. As the main destructive factor – the Russian occupiers – is eliminated, it is recovering. If in March 10 regions and Kyiv were covered by occupation and active hostilities, which produced 55% of GDP, now it is six regions and 20% of GDP, respectively,” he wrote in a column published on the website of the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Friday.
Among the main processes that indicate recovery, Lepushinsky called the almost halving of the number of enterprises that completely stopped their activity – from 32% to 17%, although 60% of enterprises are still operating below the pre-war level of workload.
According to the NBU operational surveys, almost a third of enterprises now do not experience problems with a lack of resources at all, and 48% of those surveyed will have enough available resources for more than a month, thus, compared to March, the share of businesses in which stocks have run out has decreased.
Lepushinsky added that metallurgy is starting to work, mechanical engineering is being activated, the food industry is operating at full capacity in relatively calm regions and is being restored in the liberated territories.
According to him, the labor market is gradually recovering, although the number of job seekers is growing faster than the number of vacancies, which leads to lower wages. “Less wages are an unpleasant consequence of the war. However, now it is important that the labor market is functioning and allows businesses to adapt and find workers,” said the representative of the regulator.
He also pointed out that the National Bank will continue to pause in the publication of the Inflation Report with a macroeconomic forecast until the economic situation normalizes.
“War is almost the only good reason to pause macroeconomic forecasting. Given that additional sources of uncertainty are attached – the duration and consequences of hostilities – it is impossible to make accurate forecasts today,” Lepushinsky explained.
According to him, in order to keep abreast, the NBU has stepped up work on the search and processing of alternative data, as the number of official data has narrowed.
“With the current intensity of events, only the most obvious trends that determine the development of the economy should be determined. After the uncertainty is reduced, forecast scenarios will be “strung” on such trends,” wrote the director of the NBU’s Department of Monetary Policy and Economic Analysis.
He clarified that the National Bank expects that GDP will fall by at least a third this year, and losses could be greater if active hostilities drag on.
One of the reasons for this fall Lepushinsky called the destruction of the most important infrastructure, production, real estate and valuable movable property. According to the latest NBU estimates, the loss of physical capital is about $100 billion, or half of Ukraine’s total GDP for 2021, the column notes.
Among other factors, the author named the lack of internal sources for such a significant increase in capital, although he considers it quite reasonable to hope for external sources both at the expense of confiscated Russian assets and thanks to the support of international organizations, the EU and bilateral assistance from countries.
Lepushinsky pointed out the labor force as another reason, since, according to UN estimates, 5 million people left the country, and at the initial stage of recovery, due to the disruption of communications, the destruction of production and logistics, the demand for labor will be low, which will lead to a high level of unemployment and put pressure on wages.
“However, with the resumption and growth of production capacity, the situation will change: the demand for labor will grow and lead to higher wages. An important role will be played by measures to stimulate the return of migrants to Ukraine, for example, through tax incentives and retraining measures,” the NBU representative said.
