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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

Cabinet Expects to Continue Living on Credit

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Serhiy Tyhypko

The Ukrainian Cabinet is counting on some $1 billion to be borrowed on foreign markets. Despite the principal creditors’ wait-and-see attitude, this pretty sum is expected around the beginning of August.

Aware of today’s tragic economic situation, the government would have passed the hat earlier, but Vice Premier Serhiy Tyhypko said that “given the current credit markets and their daily changing situations, this could not be done any earlier.”

How fortunate are those foreign markets! Things are constantly changing (even if not for the better). Here in Ukraine nothing seems to change: debts keeps increasing, the stock market crisis continues, and the corporate securities market is deadlocked. The only exception seems to be the promises to end wage and pension arrears this year made so convincingly and with such feeling. The creditors are at a loss: now that the wave of showcase Presidential save-economic-reform edicts has rolled away, no changes for the better are visible. In fact, even the IMF, on whose directives the Presidential fiscal policy is based, cannot consider these edicts a reliable indicator. Instead, it would be interested to know exactly how Ukraine plans to repay its foreign debt which is currently $12 billion. The Ukrainian government cannot answer this one honestly, because it itself has no idea. Mr. Tyhypko’s statement is probably merely sending out a feeler; in the West, he still considered a reformer on par with Viktor Pynzenyk.

 

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