Ukraine expects to need $3.5 bln of additional financing per month in 2023 - finance minister

MOSCOW. Oct 13 (Interfax) - Ukraine will need continued massive budget deficit financing in the amount of about $3.5 billion per month in 2023, Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko said at a meeting with the leadership of the International Monetary Fund in Washington on October 11.

"Today we are seeing the gradual recovery of the Ukrainian economy, but [...] it is extremely important for us to launch a program of cooperation with the IMF to ensure the stability of the financial system. Ukraine will need additional financing of as much as $3.5 billion in 2023," Marchenko said on the ministry's Telegram channel.

He said further cooperation with the IMF is a top priority for Ukraine. At a meeting with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, he discussed the possibility of a new credit program to support the Ukrainian state budget's priority expenditures in 2023, and at a meeting with the director of the IMF's European Department, Alfred Kammer, Marchenko voiced hopes that the parties will work out the terms for launching a new cooperation program soon.

A ministerial roundtable on support for Ukraine, with the participation of Georgieva and World Bank head David Malpass, was scheduled to be held on Wednesday within the context of the IMF and World Bank meeting. It was supposed to discuss Ukraine's financing needs, priorities for sustaining essential services, as well as priority recovery and reconstruction projects that can be quickly initiated.

The first such roundtable was held at the IMF and World Bank spring meeting on April 21. At that meeting it was said that Ukraine needed $5 billion of budget deficit financing per month.

Ukraine's state budget for 2023, which has been passed in the first reading, calls for external deficit financing of $38 billion, or about $3.2 billion per month.