Ukraine

Ukraine pledged to remove heavy weapons from conflict-hit eastern areas as public finances ruined by the war made it necessary to start restructuring public debt, Bloomberg News reported. The truce agreed in Minsk last month has largely held, with some shelling by pro-Russian rebels still reported, Ukrainian military officials said Wednesday. Kiev City Council gave the government a mandate to restructure $550 million of its debt as the sovereign prepares to negotiate with bond holders alongside a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

The central bank pushed lending rates even higher Tuesday in an attempt to stabilize Ukraine’s beleaguered currency and hold its financial system together until promised international loans arrive later this month, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move comes as the government hurried to complete painful overhauls—including raising energy prices and cutting pensions—to meet the terms of a deal with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF will decide next week whether to approve a $17.5-billion bailout to prop up the conflict-torn country’s finances.

It may go down as one of the least effective bail-outs the world has ever seen. Not Greece’s, but Ukraine’s, The Economist reported. Just two weeks ago Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), promised Ukraine $40 billion over four years—an impressive-sounding sum for a country whose GDP may soon shrink to $70 billion. Since then, however, Ukraine’s economic crisis has got much worse. The currency has hit new lows: a dollar now buys around 30 hryvnia (see chart).

Ukraine’s economic woes deepened Wednesday as its central bank drastically limited access to foreign currency in an effort to halt the hryvnia’s free fall, and Russia threatened to halt natural-gas deliveries, The Wall Street Journal reported. The hryvnia’s decline has accelerated in recent days, in part because of delays in parliament on legislative measures needed to unlock financing from the International Monetary Fund, as well as continued fighting in eastern Ukraine with Russia-backed separatists.

Ukraine hopes to get as much as $10.8 billion from the International Monetary Fund in 2015 and save up to $15 billion over the next four years from a planned restructuring of its foreign debt, the crisis-hit country’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ukraine is dependent on international funding as its finances and economy have been hammered by a bloody, monthslong conflict with Moscow-backed militants in its industrial east. The IMF proposed last week a $17.5 billion four-year program to shore up Ukraine’s war-torn economy.

Ukraine’s $40 billion international bailout plan and cease-fire agreement are paving the way for the government to start debt restructuring talks with creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The International Monetary Fund-led package comprises of some $27 billion in aid from multinational lenders and foreign governments, as well as about $13 billion from Ukrainian“debt operations,” Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said in an interview on Thursday.

Germany’s finance minister said on Tuesday that Ukraine should start negotiations with its creditors on how to restructure its debts as part of a wider plan to stabilize the conflict-ridden country, The Wall Street Journal reported. Efforts by the international community, including the International Monetary Fund, to secure Ukraine’s financial needs “are linked to Ukraine also making efforts to talk to its creditors about an extension of maturities, so a kind of debt restructuring,” Wolfgang Schäuble said following talks with his European Union counterparts.

Ukraine’s finance minister said Wednesday the government hopes to start debt negotiations with creditors next month after it completes a deal on an expanded emergency-loan package with the International Monetary Fund, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Once we’ve come to an agreement with the IMF on the program, we will invite our sovereign creditors to consult with us on how we can work together to improve the medium term debt sustainability of the country,” Ukraine Finance Minister Natalia Jaresko said in an interview.

Ukraine isn’t planning to restructure its debt and is working with the International Monetary Fund on a “sustainable program” to fight a recession and sinking foreign reserves, the nation’s acting deputy central bank head said, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. “We are a good a borrower and we want to follow the credit history of Ukraine and therefore this discussion on restructuring is not on the table now,” Vladyslav Rashkovan said Tuesday in an interview in Vienna. Debt restructuring is “absolutely,” he said.

Ukrainian bonds have sunk to a record low on concerns that the strife-torn country will default this year, as a tool developed by the Financial Times in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund shows the country’s debts have spiralled far higher than expected. Kiev was bailed out by the IMF last spring after the ousting of Viktor Yanukovich from the presidency, but Russia’s annexation of its Crimean region and support for separatist rebels in the eastern industrial heartlands have wrecked its economy and state finances.