Ukraine parliament asked to approve 14 bills critical for IMF cooperation

Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv, who also serves as economy minister, submitted to parliament 14 bills that need to be approved for resuming cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a ministry’s press release stated on May 10. Kubiv recommended their adoption in the next two weeks. The legislative package includes measures creating a business ombudsman, splitting supply and distribution services on the electricity market, optimizing State Fiscal Service structures, simplifying appeals procedures against State Fiscal Service decisions and strengthening state property management. 

On the top of that, Kubiv suggested that parliament make as its top priority supporting recent Cabinet initiatives that include increasing social standards (by 10% as of December 2016), canceling pension taxation and simplifying import procedures for medicines certified in developed states like the EU, Switzerland, the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan.

In related news, Ukraine’s central bank chair Valeria Gontareva said her institution has met all IMF program requirements and is looking forward to completing the second IMF review, which is currently occurring under the direction of its mission in Kyiv. 

Alexander Paraschiy: As discussed, the Ukrainian government is working to approve 19 bills to receive the next IMF tranche, which is also an unavoidable precondition for further cooperation with IFIs. Kubiv and Parliamentary Speaker Andriy Parubiy have claimed this effort will be serious (as opposed to the half-hearted efforts of the last half-year), yet we cannot rule out surprises with some bills given the unpredictable behavior of parliamentary coalition. In the big picture, we see strong chances for the government to push through parliament all the needed legislation by June.

Even with that being accomplished, we do not expect the 19 bills to be sufficient to resume IMF cooperation. Further anti-corruption measures will be the IMF’s most critical demand of the Ukrainian government, the details of which could become public only after the IMF mission visit concludes on May 18.