REUTERS
U.S. investment firm Goldman Sachs believes Ukraine will likely miss a bond coupon payment next month and default on its debt, Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported with reference to Bloomberg.
The government is unlikely to resolve a disagreement with its creditors on its debt repayment plan in the coming weeks and will likely issue a moratorium before a July 24 coupon payment date, analyst Andrew Matheny wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
"Ukraine will not make the July 24 coupon payment and, as a result, will enter into default at that point,” Matheny said of his base-case scenario in the report, adding that the lenders will likely not accept the proposed debt restructuring plan.
As reported earlier, Ukraine has asked creditors to accept a 40 percent write-off in principal and accept new bonds tied to its future economic performance.
Bloomberg also reported that next week Finance Minister of Ukraine Natalia Jaresko is expected to meet face to face with the creditors in Washington. Following three months of negotiations, the creditors, who hold $9 billion in external debt of Ukraine, are still rejecting the conditions that the Ukrainian government is offering.
Previously, the IMF officials took a preliminary decision by which they recognized the debt of Ukraine to Russia in amount of $ 3 billion as public debt and not a private one, implying that Kyiv will not be able to defer repayment and forced to make a payment in December.