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Ukraine to continue loan negotiations with IMF

Earlier Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov said Kiev had no need to ask the IMF for a loan after an agreement had been reached on a 15-billion-dollar loan from Russia

© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

KIEV, December 22, (ITAR-TASS). Ukraine will continue loan negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Boiko told 1+1 television.

“We need an IMF loan, as it is offered on advantageous terms,” he said. “We will keep working with the fund, although we cannot accept some of its terms necessary for the crediting to be continued,” Boiko said.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov said Kiev had no need to ask the IMF for a loan after an agreement had been reached on a 15-billion-dollar loan from Russia. “At the moment we have absolutely no need to apply to the IMF for a loan, but now we are more prepared in the negotiations with the IMF,” he said.

According to the prime minister, Kiev would have accepted the IMF terms if it had not been for a Russian loan. “We would have had to accept the IMF terms. Then, high gas prices and debts would have put pressure on us,” the prime minister stressed.

He stressed, however, that Ukraine was “ready to work with the fund as well”. Now, as the gas price was reduced, “there are no grounds for raising gas tariffs for the population” as the IMF demanded, he said.

If gas tariffs had been raised, Ukraine “would have to socially protect 85 to 90 percent of the population,” the prime minister said.

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