Ukraine Says New $5-B IMF Loan Reassures Other Creditors

Securing a new $5 billion loan from the IMF would help reassure Ukraine's other creditors that the war-torn country's macroeconomic situation was under control, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief economic adviser told Andrea Shalal of Reuters.

Photo Insert: Fresh financing from the IMF for around 18 months could serve as the anchor for a larger package of $15 billion-$20 billion to help Ukraine weather the economic crisis caused by Russia's invasion.

Fresh financing from the IMF for around 18 months could serve as the anchor for a larger package of $15 billion-$20 billion to help Ukraine weather the economic crisis caused by Russia's invasion, the adviser, Oleg Ustenko, said.

He added that Ukrainian officials were in touch with the global lender about the potential request, adding that the goal should be to move forward as quickly as possible.

Ustenko's comments came just over two weeks after Ukraine's central bank governor, Kyrylo Shevchenko, told Reuters that he was seeking as much as $20 billion from the IMF over two or three years - an amount that would have put Ukraine well over the fund's "exceptional access limit" for lending.

The large size of that request triggered an intense debate within the IMF because it would have also raised questions about the sustainability of Ukraine's debt.

The revised plan would be modeled on a financing package agreed in 2015, after Russia's invasion of the Crimea region of Ukraine, that included $17.5 billion in IMF funding but helped leverage total funding of $40 billion.

"An IMF program of $5 billion would be in line with earlier funding levels and might be a catalyst for funding from other sources, including the EU, the US Treasury, and other individual countries," Ustenko told Reuters.

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