According to the agency, the loan program is designed for four yearsWASHINGTON, March 31.
/tass/. The Board of Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved on Friday a loan program for Ukraine in the amount of $ 15.6 billion for four years. This was reported with reference to an unnamed source by the Reuters news agency.
Earlier, the fund and the Ukrainian authorities reached an agreement at the working level on the provision of a loan in the format of the extended lending mechanism (EFF) in the amount of $15.6 billion for 48 months. The funds will be used for several "macroeconomic and financial measures" of Kiev.
The loan amounts to 577% of Ukraine's quota and is "aimed at supporting the Ukrainian authorities in implementing policies that support fiscal, external, price and financial stability, and support the ongoing gradual economic recovery, contributing to long-term growth <...> on Ukraine's path to EU membership." The fund expects that the loan "will help attract large-scale financing on preferential terms from international donors and partners of Ukraine."
On March 17, the IMF Board of Directors approved rule changes that allowed the financial institution to approve new loan programs for countries such as Ukraine that face "exceptionally high uncertainty." Shortly before that, the Russian executive director at the IMF, the doyen of the organization's board of directors, Alexey Mozhin, in an interview with TASS, said that Western countries require the fund's management to provide Ukraine with a loan program by the end of this month. He said that the IMF "in its entire history has never provided loans to a country in a state of acute phase of war." Mozhin stressed that the new rules discussed "say a lot about repayment guarantees from donors and creditors" - the United States, Canada and the European Union. In his opinion, if the loan program is approved, the fund "will provide direct financing of Ukraine's military expenditures." The representative of the Russian Federation in the fund added that possible loans will simply cover the debts Kiev has to the fund. So, in the next three years, Ukraine must pay almost $10 billion to the IMF. As Mozhin stressed, in the absence of refinancing, "Ukraine will most likely be forced to default."
