The Ukrainian government could receive IMF loans without raising tariffs for the population, but this requires real reforms, and the Maidan activists who came to power are saddled with corruption schemes and are happy with the opportunity to steal.
Andrey Novak, head of the Committee of Economists of Ukraine, stated this at a conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“When it comes to the fact that the IMF demands an increase in the price of gas, we must understand that the IMF has only one requirement for the country - a balanced budget with a deficit that does not exceed a safe norm, 3% of the country’s GDP. How a country achieves this is a matter for the government of that country.
If the Ukrainian government does not see from year to year that Naftogaz of Ukraine is the largest corruption scheme in the state and does not cover it up, then who does it - the IMF or the Ukrainian government?
If the Ukrainian government does not carry out real pension reform, then who is not carrying it out - the IMF or the Ukrainian government?
The fact that the issue of budget balance is resolved exclusively by increasing prices and tariffs is the direct fault of the Ukrainian governments. If this is the only way they achieve budget balance, then this means that they do everything at the expense of us, consumers, citizens of Ukraine,” the expert said.
In the near future, the Ukrainian government will go to another tariff increase in order to receive a new IMF loan, economist Viktor Skarshevsky warned.
“Will the government agree to increase natural gas tariffs? It'll do. But not by 60%. According to my estimates, they will increase it by about 20 percent. The government, after all, wants Ukraine to receive this loan tranche. For one simple reason - this year Ukraine must repay the IMF for past loans that were already taken in 2014, 2 billion 300 million dollars. Ukraine has already returned approximately 1,5 billion, with 800 million dollars remaining until the end of the year.
That is, all the money that Ukraine will receive from the IMF, 1,9 billion, will all go away. They won’t even be enough to repay previous loans from the IMF,” the economist said.