BRUSSELS, July 08. /ITAR-TASS/. International coordination conference of Ukraine’s donors is to convene here Tuesday. It is not expected to produce a decision on immediate new allocations of aid to the former Soviet republic, the economy of which is in the doldrums.
July 8, all the traditional participants in such meetings will get together. They are the European Commission, the EU member-states, the U.S., Canada, Japan, and some others, the European Commission’s press service said, adding that this is exactly a coordination meeting and not a conference on providing aid as such.
The conference of donors that is hoped to take concrete decisions on aid will be held before the end of this year.
The list of participants in the Tuesday meeting also includes the IMF, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the UN Development Programme, and a number of other humanitarian organizations.
Ukraine will be represented by Deputy Prime Minister in charge of regional development, construction, housing, and public services, Vladimir Groisman.
Donor conferences are part of the EU’s routine practices but they most typically concern the countries of Africa and the Middle East, as well as the countries and regions that have suffered as a result of military conflicts.
The EU held a series of similar conferences for Georgia in 2008 and 2009.
March 5, 2014, the European Commission endorsed the program of European economic aid for Ukraine in the amount of around 11 billion euro. Out of it, the macro-financial aid stands at 1.61 billion euro.
The European Commission promises another 1.5 billion euro that will be allocated from the EU development fund for supporting Ukraine’s economy through to 2020.
The remaining 8 billion euro is made up of virtual money that should be provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (5 billion euro) and European Investment Bank (3 billion euro) and will depend on the practical showings of the Ukrainian economy, as well as on the comprehensive transformation Ukraine is presupposed to effectuate.
The dates for releasing the latter installment of aid have not been established yet. So far, Kiev has received 750 million euro as of January 1, 2014.
The IMF is designing its program of financing to the tune of $ 17 billion separately from the EU. However, Kiev will have implement whole range of extremely painful measures, including liberalization of energy resources prices on the domestic market.