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programme will go to the budget, not to the central bank reserves as it happened previously,” said Marchenko.
Ukraine hopes the state budget will get at least $3.5bn from the IMF, $1bn from the World Bank and €1.7bn from the European Commission. The latter includes €500mn under an existing programme and €1.2bn from a new package.
“We are finalising negotiations on obtaining a DPL (Development Policy Loan) from the World Bank, and we are in intensive talks with many of other our partners,” Marchenko said, without saying who the other partners were.
Ukraine sold a Eurobond worth €1.25bn in January, which is approximately enough to cover external commercial debt payments.
“Given that the rest of external sovereign debt obligations should be paid to official lenders, we plan to implement our borrowing plan by receiving financing from our international partners,” the minister said.
Ukraine faces its first large repayment this year in late May: a $1bn Eurobond that had been issued with United States government guarantees.
The EU Commission is going to announce macro financial assistance to its partner countries, of, which Ukraine can count on over €1bn, former President Petro Poroshenko wrote in his blog on April 21. He did not specify whether this will be a separate program, or an extension of the currently active MFA IV program, under, which Ukraine is eligible to receive the second tranche of €0.5bn by March 2021. Poroshenko expressed his hope that Ukraine’s parliament will adopt the necessary legislation to initiate an IMF program, which will pave the way for EU support. Recall, Ukraine and the EU Commission signed in September 2018 a memorandum for an MFA IV program for a €1bn loan, divided in two tranches. The first tranche was disbursed in December 2018, while the second has been available for the 2.5 years since the memorandum's signing. Ukraine has met all the requirements for the second tranche, but the financing is now conditional on the start of the IMF program.
36 UKRAINE Country Report May 2020 www.intellinews.com
