Current magical reality must take into account prospect that this may not always be the case – Ukraine's Minister of Finance
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko has called for being prepared for a possible deterioration in macroeconomic stability in the second half of 2024-2025.
"The situation with macro-stability is quite simple: there is money – there is stability, no money – no stability," he said at the "Ukraine's European Path. Dialogues about the Future" forum organized by the NV publication.
The minister clarified that Ukraine currently depends on partners for half of its needs.
"If we talk about GDP indicators, exchange rate dynamics, price dynamics – everything is very stable for us. Sometimes too stable, as from the point of view of the Ministry of Finance. We constantly convey these messages to our colleagues from the National Bank. We want our current magical reality to take into account prospects that this may not always be the case. And we may now need to think and prepare for what awaits us in the second half of 2024, what awaits us in 2025," Marchenko said.
He stated that now every U.S. dollar of additional assistance is hard to come by.
"This means only one thing: we need to accept this reality, because no matter how convincingly we argue that our situation is only getting worse or, at least, not getting better, this is not a sufficient argument for our partners to say that we are ready to support you financially for as long as necessary," the minister said.
According to him, the Ministry of Finance is thinking about how to increase the degree of independence and be prepared for a situation when Ukraine does not receive enough funds.
Marchenko added that although in March the budget received a record $9 billion in foreign aid since the beginning of the war, this was preceded by January-February, when it arrived at only 10% of what was needed and questions arose regarding liquidity.
"So there's still a lot of work to be done. And, again, I'm not going to say that we're doing badly or that things will get worse. I'm just saying that reality forces us to look at other ways to balance our fiscal needs other than relying on international support," concluded Marchenko.
