The Ukrainian delegation, led by Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and NBU Head Andriy Pyshny, expressed their gratitude to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva for the Fund's decision to increase the number of tranches and total financing in 2025 under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program.
"Now, for 2025, the IMF EFF program provides for up to $2.7 billion following four reviews. Initially, this amount was around $1.8 billion according to two program reviews," the Ministry of Finance stated on Wednesday after the meeting that took place the day before in Washington during the IMF and World Bank assembly.
According to the updated results of the 5th program review, changes have been made to the schedule of program reviews and tranches at Ukraine's request. Previously, it included only two reviews for 2025 – at the beginning of March and at the end of August, with tranches of $917.5 million following each. Now, the schedule for the next year includes four quarterly reviews, just like this year. The amount of the 8th tranche following the 7th review in March remains unchanged at $917.5 million, while the amounts of the subsequent three tranches next year will be $809.6 million, $539.8 million, and $445.3 million, respectively.
As a result of these changes, the total number of program reviews has increased from 11 to 13, and the sizes of the last three tranches in March and August 2026, and March 2027 have been reduced to $941.3 million, $1,007.1 million, and $1,069.6 million, respectively, whereas they were previously expected to be around $1.3 billion each.
On Wednesday, following the 5th review, Ukraine received the 6th tranche under the EFF program amounting to $1.1 billion, raising the total disbursements under the program initiated in March 2023 to $8.7 billion out of a total volume of $15.6 billion. Since the onset of the full-scale invasion, the IMF has allocated more than $11.3 billion, making the Fund the third-largest partner of Ukraine in terms of financial assistance (after the EU and the USA).
Georgieva described the meeting as productive. "I highly appreciated the resilience of Ukraine's economy and the strong performance of the program. I commended their efforts to improve governance and mobilize revenues for priority expenditures," – wrote her on social media X.
[IMAGE_3] The discussions included representatives from the Ministry of Finance delegation – Deputy Finance Ministers Yuriy Draganchuk, Olha Zykova, Svitlana Vorobei, Government Commissioner for Public Debt Management Yuriy Butsa, as well as NBU Deputy Head Serhiy Nikolaychuk, Ukraine's representative to the IMF Vladyslav Rashkovan, and Ukraine's Ambassador to the USA Oksana Markarova.
The Ministry of Finance clarified that together with the IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath and the Director of the IMF European Department Alfred Kammer, the parties discussed key indicators of the draft state budget for 2025, critical macroeconomic indicators, and needs for external financing for the following year. Additionally, the Ukrainian delegation met with the head of the IMF mission in Ukraine Gavin Gray and Fund experts.
Marchenko talked about the draft of the third state budget under martial law and its priorities – security and defense, which remain the largest expenditure item. "We need support from international partners. The need for external financing next year is estimated at around $38.4 billion," the minister noted.
The parties agreed on the necessity to strengthen Ukraine's internal financial capacity to effectively respond to significant challenges posed by the full-scale war, the Ministry of Finance indicated.
NBU Head Pyshny added that the two main tracks of conversation during the meeting with the IMF mission team led by Gavin Gray were the preparation for the sixth review of the planned program in December and the vision of the overall macro framework for 2024-2025.
"Before the next program review, the NBU must complete an assessment of key financial stability risks and update the NBU's emergency action plan based on the results obtained. Gavin Gray confirmed that the mission notes significant progress in meeting this benchmark," – Pysny pointed out.