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stabilization pursued since 2014. Now Ukraine needs the IMF,” Anders Aslund is a Swedish economist and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council said in a tweet.
The rates Ukraine has been charged for international bond placements tumbled in the last year as enthusiasm for newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy soared and his promise of change.
But the mood has soured dramatically in the last month, especially following March 4 government reshuffle​ that saw many of the young technocratic reformer sacked from their ministrial posts. Investors have been further phased by the timing of the reshuffle as the double whammy of coronavirus and oil price collapse exacerbates uncertanties.
Ukriane has also been able to raise some $5bn from foreign investors participation on the domestic debt market that was hooked up the Clearstream international settlement and payment system last April. There too yields have tumbled over the last year, but investors have pulled back in the last few sessions following an emerging market sell off on the last day of February.
A deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is gaining increasing significance. Agreed in principle in December, Kyiv has not been able to close the deal worth $5.5bn. The IMF has been insistant on various reforms that the new government has yet to delieve on, chief amongst them being a new law that would prohibt the government returning a bank to a former owner if it had been nationalised. Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky has been pressuring the government to return his bank Privatbank with an onslaught of legal cases and open harrassment of senior officials at the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), including violence and arson attacks.
Ukraine could be facing a debt crisis later this year if the IMF deal falls through. Cut off from the debt markets, the government can only finance scheduled debt payments of $5bn from its gross international reserves (GIR).
Reserves amount to $26.6bn (as of the beginning of March), remaining the only available source to deal with Ukraine’s external payments of around $5bn in 2020. With evolving turmoil at the international markets, Ukraine’s chances for external borrowing are next to zero. In this situation, securing IMF financing in the nearest future is a critical necessity,” Evgeniya Akhtyrko of Concorde Capital said in a note.
2.4​ ​Zelenskiy manoeuvres a personal friend in as CEO to run state-owned Ukreximbank
Yehven Metsger was appointed CEO of Ukreximbank on March 13 ​after his nomination by the supervisory board was approved by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Interfax-Ukraine reported on March 16.
Metsger is an experience banker and is the former deputy director at another state-controlled bank, Ukrgazbank, where he was responsible for SME lending.
Ukreximbank is one of the three biggest banks in the country and is the former Soviet era bank responsible to financing international trade, a role it retains
8​ UKRAINE Country Report​ April 2018 ​ ​www.intellinews.com