KYIV. Aug 3 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has said that the second tranche, $1.7 billion, of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, due to arrive in next few days, will be used to fill the gold reserve of the National Bank of Ukraine.
“Back in February our reserves of the National Bank stood at just $5.6 billion, and this whole amount disbursed by the IMF will go into the National Bank’s gold reserve,” he said on the “Ten Minutes with the Premier” program on the Espreso television on Sunday evening.
That the IMF is disbursing the second tranche shows that Ukraine is taking steps to fight corruption, the prime minister said.
It was reported that the IMF had approved a SDR12.348 billion (around $17.5 billion) Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program on March 11 this year, to support economic stabilization in Ukraine, and setting out broad and deep economic reforms aimed at restoring steady growth in the medium term and increasing the country’s living standards.
Overall, the four-year $17.5 billion program includes four tranches to be disbursed to Ukraine in 2015. The first tranche, $5 billion, has already been paid out. The other three will be $1.7 billion each. Four annual tranches, $620-630 million each, are expected to be disbursed over the next three years.
On July 31 the IMF Board of Governors completed the first review of how Ukraine implements the economic program propped up with the EFF loan, and approved a disbursement of the loan’s second tranche in the amount of SDR1.1821 billion (1.7$ million). The Ukrainian Finance Ministry said it is expecting to receive the money in the next few days.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Hennadiy Zubko said later that some of these funds would be used to support and stabilize the Ukrainian financial system, some to pay off debts, including those for gas and of the previous years.
