The International Monetary Fund will continue to interact with the Ukrainian authorities in the coming weeks in preparation for the second review of the EFF program, generally assessing its implementation positively, said Uma Ramakrishnan, Deputy Director of the Fund’s European Department.

“Our main assessment is that the program as a whole continues to be implemented well,” she said at a press conference in Kyiv following the visit of the fund delegation.

Ramakrishnan noted that a number of short-term priorities, including the adoption of the budget and a number of government measures, are underway.

According to her, the resumption of work of the IMF permanent mission in Ukraine this week will help expand and deepen interaction with a wide range of stakeholders.

As reported, the four-year EFF program was approved on March 31 this year, and the first tranche of $2.7 billion was disbursed in early April. The planned schedule of the program assumes the allocation to Ukraine after the first tranche of three tranches of SDR664 million (about $870 million at the current exchange rate) in mid-June and October of this year and at the end of February next year based on the results of the first, second and third review, when the fulfillment of obligations for the period at the end of the year is assessed in April, June and December this year respectively.

On September 25, the IMF mission began working in Warsaw to prepare for the second review of the program. It is expected that in case of a successful verdict of the mission, the decision on the allocation of the third tranche of the EFF program may be made in the second half of October - November. At the same time, Ukraine has not yet fulfilled all the structural benchmarks of the program necessary for its second review.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and until recently, the fund’s missions worked outside of Ukraine, and its representative office in Kyiv was temporarily not functioning.