MOSCOW, April 8. /TASS/. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should not challenge the official status of Russia’s $3 billion loan to Ukraine, Russia’s official representative to the IMF Alexey Mozhin told TASS.
In December 2013, Russia bought Ukraine’s Eurobonds worth $3 billion paying for them from the National Welfare Fund (NWF)
On March 26, IMF’s William Murray said that the debt could not be regarded as an "official" one (a debt that was granted by a state). That means that the Russian loan may be covered by the program of restructuring of Ukraine’s debt. Later the official said the IMF has not decided on the status of the Russian loan yet.
"I should say I was surprised by the recent statements of the fund’s representative", Mozhin said.
The program of assistance to Ukraine, designed by the IMF, contains a lot of risks and will be highly dependent on favor of private creditors and the dynamics of the national currency, Russia’s official representative to the IMF told TASS.
The IMF has already granted $17.5 billion to Ukraine. Under the agreement with the organization, Ukraine should restructure $15.3 billion of the debt to private investors.
"That means that the financing of this program and its entire implementation will strongly depend on favor of Ukraine’s private creditors", Mozhin said.
Russia is not interested in collapse of Ukraine’s economy and expects Kiev to pay for natural gas from the funds that were granted by the international community, Mozhin told TASS.
"I don’t think that the Ukrainian economy’s collapse would be in the interests of Russia — simply because of pure pragmatic and even selfish reasons. For example, we are expecting Ukraine to pay for the Russian natural gas supplies all the time", he said.
IMF forecast for Russia
Russian authorities do not expect IMF improving forecast on Russian economy in the next report, which will be presented on April 14 in Washington, Mozhin added.
The current IMF forecast assumes a 3% fall in Russia’s GDP on 2015. Russian Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukayev said earlier in March that the Ministry in its new forecast might adjust the figure from the current 3% to 2.5%.