The mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the first review of the EFF extended financing program with Ukraine will take place at the end of May, IMF Communications Director Julie Kozack said at a traditional briefing in Washington.

"We do expect the first review mission to take place later in May. Once we have more details about that mission, we will provide them, but I don't have any other details," she said.

According to her, the focus of the mission, of course, will be to assess the authorities' progress on meeting the policy commitments and conditionality under the program, principally in the areas of fiscal policy, governance, and monetary exchange rate policy.

"Of course the review will also take into account the recent economic and financial developments and update the outlook and risks to the economy, both under what we call the baseline scenario, but also in the case of Ukraine, we have a down side scenario," Kozack said.

"The authorities have made a very strong commitment and expressed clear timetables for advancing critical legislative changes. These include enacting a law to restore the asset declaration obligations of public officials, and that is expected by end July, amending the anti-money-laundering framework and law by end September, and adopting legislation to enhance the institutional autonomy of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) by end December," Kozack said.

As reported, on March 31, the IMF Board approved a new four-year EFF program for Ukraine with financing in the amount of $15.6 billion (SDR 11.6 billion).