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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

An IMF "Daughter-in-Law" Is To Blame for Everything,

13 October, 1998 - 00:00


Last Friday, Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko and the Ukrainian
government delegation returned to Ukraine from Washington. Ukraine held
its breath eagerly awaiting "hospitality."

Alas, this hospitality does not include any direct live money. Eloquent
witness to this was the recent unexpected statement by the Ukrainian President
about the harm of living on credit and the need to curtail expenses immediately.
While in Washington, the Premier tried his best to explain the news by
saying, "The more you ask for, the more you will have to repay."

Yet, dissatisfaction with potential creditors got the better of the
Premier who must have decided to tell them, without excessive diplomacy,
everything he thought of them before his departure from Washington, "The
financial situation in Ukraine would be stable if the IMF had not stopped
issuing loans within the stand-by program." This sounds very piquant if
compared to Pustovoitenko's other statement, "At all the Washington meetings,
the Ukrainian government was complimented for 'doing a good job' under
the economic crisis conditions." I would only like to point out that if
the Ukrainian government, in an attempt to justify its actions, keeps on
looking for someone to blame in such a credulous way, Ukraine may some
day end up with no external credit infusions whatever.

As far as the hospitality goes, the main thing is likely to be a new
currency corridor. Leonid Kuchma has already paved the ground for this
by stating that "it is incorrect to maintain the hryvnia rate at the expense
of losing currency reserves in a situation where dollar demand is significantly
rising."

 

 

 

 

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