Ukraine says it expects no fresh IMF funds this year

KIEV: Ukraine said on Tuesday it was not hoping for fresh money from the International Monetary Fund this year, but said a payment delayed from 2015 should still come its way.

The announcement by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman signals the Fund's lingering reservations about the corruption and legislative problems besetting the cash-strapped former Soviet state.

The IMF approved a new four-year $17.5-billion (15.4-billion-euro) bailout in 2015 that was part of a broader $40-billion global assistance package aimed at helping Ukraine's leaders along on their new westward course.

But the graft and back-room dealings between powerful tycoons that was one of the irritants feeding Ukraine's February 2014 pro-EU revolution continue to plague the country.

Groysman -- a 38-yea-old protege of President Petro Poroshenko -- became premier in April with a mission to resolve graft scandals that had led to the resignation of reformist officials and paralysed the government's work.

An IMF mission that completed a visit to Kiev in May said it had "reached (a) staff level agreement with the authorities" that may be approved by Fund's board in July.

But Groysman said on Tuesday that "as far as the tranche is concerned, its total for 2016 should be $1.7 billion."

He added that it did not matter if the payments were split in two parts as some earlier reports had suggested.

"I see no difference when and how much we receive," he told reporters.

Ukraine has so far only received $6.7 billion of the IMF's loan package and seen no new disbursements since August of 2015.

The Fund has been frustrated by the slow passage of painful belt-tightening measures that were being resisted by populist parties and damaged the approval ratings of leaders who rose to power in the wake of Ukraine's shift out of Russia's orbit.

The IMF's said in May it remained "important that the authorities boost their efforts to entrench fiscal and financial stability, decisively enhance transparency and the rule of law, and reform the large and inefficient state-owned enterprise sector."

Groysman also raised the 2016 growth forecast to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product from the 1.1 percent predicted by the central bank.