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Siluanov: SDR loan to Ukraine will be lucrative

MOSCOW, January 16, 5:02 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s finance ministry says the SDR loan to Ukraine will be lucrative, Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with the Russia-24 television broadcaster.

The minister said Russia has SDR means of nine billion dollars.

“As yet, we have been calculating those means in the gold-currency reserves, but now is the moment, where we may consider another use of those, a more effective one,” he said. “We consider using the means as a loan to other countries, including Ukraine.”

“The means will be loaned. And loans have interest. Thus Russia will be able to get revenues for the loaned money,” the finance minister said. The interest rate will depend on how Moscow and Kiev agree on it, he added.

Earlier, Russia has not offered loans in SDR, he continued.

“We have not practiced it, but we believe an option quite possible.”

Earlier, Itar-Tass reported Russia had promised to Ukraine a financial assistance of 15 billion dollars. The plan was that some of that money may be in Ukraine’s bonds. In late 2013, Russia bought bonds worth three billion dollars having used money from the National Wellbeing Fund.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the government considered a loan to Ukraine in the form of SDR.

“In other words, we shall give money /to Ukraine/ to launch a mechanism of their industry, so that they were more solvent, so that our trade turnover was growing,” he said.