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International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Photo: Olivier Douliery / AFP
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is releasing a budget support loan of $880 million to Ukraine. This enables the country to pay out a total of $5.4 billion. The IMF, based in Washington, announced this on Wednesday. Ukraine will receive the money in the coming days.
The IMF approved a loan program worth $15.6 billion for Ukraine in April 2023. It was the first time that an IMF loan was given to a country at war.
The loan program has a term of four years. Ukraine performed well overall in the first year, meeting all but one of the IMF's quantitative performance criteria, said the head of the IMF's Ukraine mission, Gavin Gray. The failure affected tax revenue, but only to a very small extent.
According to the IMF, the aim of the loan is to anchor a “policy in Ukraine that maintains fiscal, foreign trade, price and financial stability” and supports economic recovery. The IMF still expects the war in Ukraine to end by the end of 2024, Gray said.
vet/Reuters