The International Monetary Fund (IMF) returned the long-term forecast for Ukraine to the World Economic Outlook, while after the start of the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation in February 2022, the WEO gave only a forecast for the current year.

Ukraine's forecasts for 2024-2028 are now included and consistent with the baseline scenario of the program (expanded EFF), the WEO: Navigating Global Divergences macro forecast released on Tuesday said.

In previous WEOs, the fund indicated that for Ukraine, all forecasts for 2024-2028 are omitted due to an unusually high degree of uncertainty.

According to the updated global macro forecast, the IMF expects Ukraine's GDP to grow by 2% in 2023 and accelerate to 3.2% in 2024. In 2028, according to the fund, the Ukrainian economy will grow by 4% per year.

IMF Mission Chief for Ukraine Gavin Gray said in Kyiv last week that as part of the second review of the EFF program, it is planned to update the macroeconomic framework.

His deputy Natan Epstein recalled that the IMF in June improved its forecast for Ukraine’s GDP growth this year from the range of -3% to +1% to +1% to +3%. According to him, the fund currently estimates economic performance closer to the upper end of this new range.

He added that the fund is still sticking to the base scenario, according to which the war will end in the middle of next year. According to Epstein, given the expected difficulties of the coming winter, we are talking about moderate economic growth rates.

The macro forecast for Ukraine published in WEO from the baseline scenario of the EFF program so far suggests a decrease in inflation from 26.6% last year to 15.5% this year and to 10% next, although by the end of September it had already dropped to 7.1%.

As for the current account balance, the IMF's WEO forecasts a deficit of 5.7% of GDP this year, following a surplus of 5% of GDP last year, widening to 7.2% of GDP next year and narrowing to 3.8% of GDP in 2028.