Business peciliarities in Ukraine and Bealrus
Paying back its debt--barring a
further accelerated depletion of foreign exchange reserves--would be close to impossible
without fresh foreign finance, preferably in the form of disbursements from the IMF.
A two-year IMF stand-by arrangement, put in place in 2008, provided exceptional access to
financing that was crucial in helping Ukraine through the Great Recession. In particular, it
helped to prevent a banking crisis. In many respects, however, Ukraine reneged on its
commitments, and the program went off-track very soon, as a 2011 IMF evaluation
concludes. This holds for fiscal, exchange rate, and monetary policies, but in particular for
the energy sector.
In 2008, Ukraine committed itself to phasing out all gas subsidies in three years, but little
was done on that front. For some specific industries, gas prices were actually decreased in
2009. Ukrainian households still pay traditionally extremely little for the gas their everyday
life depends on
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