The Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to release a $15.6 billion loan package to Ukraine on Wednesday while reassuring contributors Kyiv has strong economic policies and is “fighting corruption.”
AP reports Ukraine’s finance ministry applauded the initiative, boasting the program will “help to mobilize financing from Ukraine’s international partners, as well as to maintain macrofinancial stability and ensure the path to post-war reconstruction after Ukrainian victory in the war against the aggressor.”
The loan program will run for four years, with the first 12 to 18 months focusing on helping Ukraine close its massive budget deficit and easing the pressure to print money to use for spending, the IMF said in a statement as reported by AP.
The loan program goes beyond previous IMF practice by lending to a country at war, under new rules that allowed assistance due to circumstances of “exceptionally high uncertainty.”
As Breitbart News reported, Ukraine has been beset by allegations of corruption to the highest levels of government since before the Russian invasion.
In January nine senior government officials were purged in the war-torn country as part of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s response to those allegations that continue to dog his administration.
Four deputy ministers and five regional governors were sacked by Ukraine’s cabinet.
The inflow of tens of billions of dollars in cash and military hardware since has done nothing to assuage the fears of critics even as the Pentagon has publicly backed the Zelensky administration, claiming there is no evidence any of the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars spent on weapons and aid sent to Ukraine has been lost to corruption or diverted into criminal hands.
Watch Joe Biden Support U.S. Taxpayers Funding Kyiv: I Don’t Think a Lot of People Are Asking How Long We Can Keep Spending Billions on Ukraine
A recent report from Transparency International found Ukraine ranked as the second most corrupt country in Europe, losing only to Russia, which ranked first.
Ukraine also ranked as the 116th most corrupt country in the world, although it rose one rank since 2021.