Expanding pause in international financial support to Ukraine to result in loss of reserves, macroeconomic stability

A pause in international financial support to Ukraine appeared due to the populist policy of some political forces and their attempts to achieve early election, if protracted further than early 2017, would result in reduction of the country's forex reserves and create a serious risk to the achieved macroeconomic stability, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeriya Gontareva has said.
"If we continue cooperation [with international financial institutions, IFIs] early next year it is not much as if we do not do this… I want that everyone understands that if we have $15.5 billion of reserves today we would start losing reserves each day," she said at a meeting of the NBU Council in Kyiv on Thursday.
"We would start losing that fragile stability each day, while we have lived for over 18 months in the stable macroeconomic situation," she said.
Gontareva said that next year the NBU predicts the deficit of the current account of Ukraine's balance of payment of $2.9 billion. The country would have to pay over $2.5 billion to service debts and $1 billion of the stand-by loan received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2014. She said that the basic forecast envisages receiving four tranches of $5.4 billion from the IMF in 2017.
"Flirting with populism and political insinuations swindle our state and damage macroeconomic stability," she said.
She pointed out the destructive position of Batkivschyna Party Leader Yulia Tymoshenko, accusing her again of presenting fake figures.
"This is totally out of line. We hope that these politicians would stand trial for all their frauds and for destroying our fragile macroeconomic stability," Gontareva said.