Participants of IMF and WB spring meetings will again discuss support for Ukraine
The ninth meeting of the ministerial roundtable on support for Ukraine will take place on Wednesday, April 15, as part of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) in Washington.
The meeting agenda notes that the World Bank Group will co-host the event with the Government of Ukraine and will co-chair it with the IMF.
Unlike previous roundtables, this time the program does not include a brief description of the event, but as usual, it will be opened by World Bank Governor Ajay Banga and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.
European Investment Bank President Nadia Calviño and European Commissioner for Growth and Productivity Valdis Dombrovskis have already announced their participation in the ninth roundtable, and he also announced his meeting in Washington with Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko is also expected to attend.
Furthermore, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos will attend the IMF-World Bank spring meeting. Among other things, she plans to discuss the EU's ongoing financial support to Ukraine under the Ukraine Facility program and meet with IMF Managing Director Georgieva.
The first meeting of this roundtable took place at the spring meeting of the IMF and the World Bank on April 21, 2022, the second at the autumn meeting on October 12 of the same year, and in subsequent years they took place every six months at similar events of these leading international financial organizations.
In the first, the head of the IMF pointed to Ukraine's monthly need for $5 billion in 2022 to finance the state budget deficit in the context of the war unleashed by Russia. In the second, Zelenskyy proposed that the global financial community take three urgent steps to support Ukraine: create a "financial Ramstein," ensure economic recovery and aid to Ukrainians, and create a mechanism to support investment and insure them against war risks.
At the third meeting, Zelenskyy asked the IMF and the World Bank to approve a $14.1 billion support program to cover priority Rapid Recovery projects, and also called for the development of specific mechanisms for using frozen Russian assets to compensate for the damage caused by Russia.
This year, during the IMF's annual meeting, which is taking place from April 13 to April 18, the Ukrainian delegation will discuss with the Fund the implementation of the new four-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) worth $8.1 billion, which was approved at the end of February this year and is part of the total external financing in 2026-2029 amounting to $136.5 billion under the baseline scenario.
The program's first structural milestones were already overdue, as they sparked internal debate in Ukraine, particularly regarding the taxation of individual entrepreneurs with value-added tax.
As reported, the new EFF program for Ukraine, totaling $8.1 billion, replaced the previous four-year $15.6 billion program, launched in March 2023, which received nine tranches totaling $10.6 billion due to the protracted war. The first tranche of the new program, totaling $1.5 billion, was received by the Ukrainian state budget in early March of this year.
