Ukraine receives 2.3b euros from IMF

Ukraine has received 2.3 billion euros representing the first International Monetary Fund batch of the bailout plan it has agreed to.

The money had been split between the bank’s foreign currency reserves and the state budget.

Ukraine is set to receive a total of 12.2 billion euros from the IMF. In return, the Kiev government must conform with certain conditions, such as increasing the price Ukrainians pay domestically for energy.

It remains unclear, however, how much of the sum received will go to partly cover the debt Ukraine has to Russia for gas supplies.

Ukraine is slowly but surely slipping into recession, despite the IMF bailout plan, rebellions in the East are freezing the industrial sector and scaring off foreign investors.

‘At the moment there is no hope for a quick resolution of the situation in the east. So the prospect of worsening GDP and industrial output forecasts will continue,’ said Anatoly Baronin of the analytical group Da Vinci.

The Ukrainian hryvnia currency fell by almost a third against the dollar in 2014 while GDP dropped by 4.3 percent as recent surveys reveal.

Gloomy clouds also loom over the presidential election set for May 25 as fears of civil war increase.