REUTERS
Director of the International Monetary Fund's Communications Department Gerry Rice announces that the IMF will assess whether Ukraine is consistent with the Fund's recently revised lending policy, allowing the issue of loans to countries with overdue official debts owed to other governments, as in the case of Ukraine's $3 billion debt to Russia.
"On the debt issue our position is pretty much as we've discussed before that we continue to encourage the Ukraine and Russia to achieve a cooperative solution that contributes to the financing and the debt objectives of the program and the board would be assessing those efforts [compliance with the altered lending policies] at the time of the second review but again I do not have the board date for you today on that," Rice said at a press briefing in Washington on Thursday.
He also noted he did not have information about the possibility of combining the third and the fourth tranches, and encouraged Ukraine and Russia to achieve a cooperative solution to the debt issue.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine on December 18 announced a moratorium on any payments of the Russian debt, including repayment of $3 billion borrowed under Viktor Yanukovych's presidency, which was falling due in December 2015. That moratorium also encompassed Ukraine's sovereign-guaranteed loans for Ukravtodor and Pivdenne Bureau owed to Russian banks.
Total debt subject to the moratorium exceeds $3.58 billion.
Earlier, the IMF Executive Board decided that the claim arising from the $3 billion eurobond issued by Ukraine on December 24, 2013, and held by Russia's National Wealth Fund was an official claim for the purposes of the Fund's lending policy to official bilateral creditors.