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A man walks past an election poster. March 25, 2019. REUTERS / Gleb Garanich

Two candidates are running for the second round of the Ukrainian presidential election: outgoing head of state Petro Poroshenko, who has disappointed the dreams of those who made the Maidan revolution in 2014, and Volodymyr Zelensky, 41, an actor without political experience, famous for having played a fictitious Ukrainian president on the small screen and who created last year a political party of the same name as the series that made him known: "Servant of the people". Three days before the election, focus on the economy of this country of 42 million inhabitants.

Ukraine is a country still at war, and a people torn between a Russian neighbor and the European Union, and one of the stakes of this election is also the economy. Because after years of crisis, Ukraine is slowly starting to get better, as Boris Najman, an economist at Paris Est Créteil University, explains.

" For two years, we have a growth that is positive, it is close to 3%, which is much better than after the crisis of 2008, whose consequences were a little later in the region and after the Maidan revolution. , which is still low for a country that must have a strong catch-up. The standard of living is still very low in Ukraine : most salaries are around 200 euros per month. We would expect more growth around 5% but nevertheless it is quite positive . "

The economy is slowly recovering, but it also had to change with the war in the Donbass, a very industrial region today paralyzed. The east of the country has grown in recent years, with the creation of small businesses in the computer industry in particular, and in the north-central of the country, the capital Kiev saw this year arrive the big brands H & M and Ikea.

Investors are more afraid of corruption than war

This economic revival is promising but still rather timid because foreign investors remain rather cautious. At stake, more than war, corruption and an economy still in the hands of only a few, reminds Boris Najman:

" We have this framework of oligarchy which is very strong still : the contracts in Ukraine are often granted to friends or for questions of loyalty and not for questions of competence, or quality of projects. The Attorney General is directly politically appointed and he reports to the President. So, in a sense, the whole judicial structure is biased by the fact that there is no independence of justice . "

The two candidates of the second round are not free from criticism when it comes to corruption. The comedian Zelensky is suspected of being the puppet of the oligarch at the head of the TV channel that produces his series; as for Poroshenko, he greatly disappointed the protesters of 2014 who judge his anti-corruption policy not to the height. His lack of action has also nearly cost the country, saved in extremis by a plan of the IMF.

This is explained by Sylvain Bellefontaine, economist at BNP Paribas: " The plan signed with the IMF last December is fundamental for the country. In fact, it replaces a bigger plan, which had been suspended in 2017, because the Ukrainian government did not meet the conditions demanded by the IMF, particularly in terms of fighting corruption. "

" This plan," he adds, " came at a time when people were really worried that the Ukrainian government would default on its commitments by 2019. So he really came to reassure foreign investors about the government's ability to honor its commitments this year, but you have to know that this plan is quite short, 14 months, that means that in 2020, the next government will have to renegotiate a new aid plan with the IMF . "

The EU, first trading partner

The comedian Zelenski announced during this between-two rounds that if he were elected, he would not rediscuss the current plan negotiated by his opponent. On the economic direction of the country, the two candidates seem moreover agree: both are turned to the European Union, the largest trading partner of Ukraine today.

Whether the self-proclaimed anti-system comedian or the incumbent president wins the election, the economic challenge will therefore be rather to see if the winner will be able to remove the resources and riches of the country from the hands of a small oligarchy to uninhibited corruption. .