Ukraine must pay its debt obligations. If the country refuses to service these debts, it will lose the opportunity to attract new loans on foreign markets, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
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This was stated by the Vice President of the World Bank, Cyril Muller.
He is confident that Ukraine will be able to pay off its debts this year and in the coming years.
“There is already a financing plan in place to help you do this. You will not be left alone with the “debt” problem,” noted the WB representative. “But two components of this plan are extremely important. Firstly, we are talking about optimizing the management of public debt, which will allow us to avoid in the future the current situation where most payments were made over a fairly short period. Debt payments must be planned in advance.”
According to the interlocutor, the Ukrainian authorities should change their approaches to debt policy, planning not only the raising of funds, but also future payments on borrowings, stretching these payments over time.
“Secondly, it is important for Ukraine to maintain access to financing not only from the World Bank and the IMF, but also on external borrowing markets. And we will have to raise funds to finance current debts. In order to be able to obtain new loans, international sources of financing must be confident that the Ukrainian economy will develop,” Muller said.
“Debts must be repaid. This is a good signal for lenders and an opportunity to obtain new financing. But when attracting new loans, you need to be very careful. And, of course, it is necessary to take a balanced approach to the amount of borrowing. There is no need to accumulate debts, because in the future part of the state’s revenues will be used to pay them off, so you need to borrow, realizing that the growth of public debt is no less a risk than refusing to service debts,” the WB vice-president emphasized.