Russia will vote against IMF's third tranche to Ukraine
The Russian representative of the International Monetary Fund will vote against allocating the third IMF tranche to Ukraine. Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Anton Siluanov declared this on September 12.
“Our position has always been open, and today we will give an order to our representative at the IMF, that when considering the assignment of the tranche to Ukraine, we will vote against this decision because we believe that it was not accepted in accordance with the rules. In IMF’s conclusion, it is said that all conditions for the tranche were fulfilled. Such a statement, in our view, is groundless and creates the conditions for similar precedents in the future,” he said.
In particular, Siluanov pointed to the unresolved issue of the so-called Yanukovych’s credit, according to which Ukraine owes Russia $3 billion.
The Meeting of Directors of the IMF, where the issue of the third tranche to Ukraine will be considered, will be held on Wednesday, September 14.
The Russian representative of the IMF Executive Board is Alexei Mozhin. According to the quota principle, he represents only 2.60% of the votes in the fund. In comparison, the US portion of votes is 16.54% and the total share of Germany, France and the UK is 13.51%.
In April 2014 the IMF approved a $17.01 billion loan program for Ukraine, and afterwards transferred two tranches of $3.19 billion and $1.39 billion respectively. In 2015, instead of the standby program, an EFF program was initiated on a longer term basis.
The last time Ukraine received the IMF tranche was in August 2015. The last mission of the fund worked in Ukraine from May 10 to May 18, 2016, and then announced that the fund would consider the allocation of the next tranche for Ukraine in July. However, the meeting of the Board of Directors was postponed until mid-September.