IMF announces Ukraine rescue visit
IMF will dispatch team to Ukraine to determine how much extra aid would make it through winter
KIEV: (AFP) - The International Monetary Fund said on Saturday it would dispatch a team to Ukraine to determine just how much extra aid the war-wrecked and energy-starved nation will need to make it through winter.
The nine-day visit due to start on Tuesday comes as Ukraine suffers rolling blackouts and resentment grows over a severe IMF-prescribed austerity drive.
The Fund has helped piece together a $27-billion (22-billion-euro) global rescue package -- promising to contribute $17 billion of that sum over two years -- in the weeks that followed the February ouster in Kiev of a Russian-backed president.
But it has since said the new pro-Western government may need at least $19 billion in additional assistance should its war against pro-Russian insurgents in the eastern industrial heartland drag on through the end of 2015.
The IMF s Kiev representative Jerome Vacher said only that "the mission will begin policy discussions with the Ukrainian authorities in the context of the Fund-supported economic reform program."
Yet its arrival will also deliver a vote of confidence in the reformist cabinet that President Petro Poroshenko put together after weeks of political infighting that left Ukraine s Western supporters frustrated and dismayed.
The finance ministry is now headed by Natalie Jaresko -- a US citizen who once worked in the State Department and more recently held a senior post in a private equity firm in Kiev.
The Lithuanian investment banker Aivaras Abromavicius will serve alongside her as economy minister. Both were handed Ukrainian passports by Poroshenko just hours ahead of their confirmation by parliament.
"These appointments raise expectations that Poroshenko and (Prime Minister Arseniy) Yatsenyuk are going to move swiftly against corruption and on other key issues that will transform Ukraine s economy and governance," said John Herbst of the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank.
