IMF to assess impact of amendment on new payments, restrictions in Ukraine's public sector
MOSCOW. April 12 (Interfax) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will study a legislative amendment passed by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on April 10 on the return of payments of UAH 30,000 to military personnel, simultaneously limiting payments in the public sector, state-owned enterprises, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and other government agencies with a limit of UAH 67,000 and will evaluate its impact.
IMF mission chief for Ukraine Gavin Gray said in an interview with Ukrainian media that the IMF is aware of the amendment adopted on April 10 by the parliament regarding the legal basis for applying measures related to martial law, and the Fund is now assessing its impact.
Asked about the extent to which Ukraine has already fulfilled a number of its obligations under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program, in particular, whether quantitative criteria were met at the end of March, the chief of mission said that it was too early to comment since the new program was approved just over a week ago.
There is no comment from the Finance Ministry on the possible impact of this amendment on the budget and cooperation with the IMF. The implementation of this amendment will require an additional UAH 146 billion in spending, deputy head of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Taxes and Customs Policy (the Golos parliamentary faction) Yaroslav Zheleznyak said.
On April 11, MP Vladimir Tsabal (the Golos faction) submitted to the Rada a draft resolution to cancel the decision on this amendment. Until the consideration of this resolution, the Rada speaker cannot sign the bill with the amendment and send it to the president.
On March 21, the Rada increased the expenditures in the 2023 state budget by UAH 487 billion and the revenue by UAH 61 billion, which resulted in a 419 billion UAH deficit growth. The president signed the law on April 11, which allowed for fulfilling one of 19 structural beacons of the EFF program.
Additionally, the government pledged to submit to the Rada by the end of May a bill tightening the provisions of the Budget Code to minimize ad hoc changes to the budget.