What is the new memorandum with IMF about?

The Minister of Finance of Ukraine, Alexander Danilyuk, has disclosed the content of the updated memorandum with the International Financial Fund.

The updated memorandum with the IMF contains, in particular, provisions on pension, land and banking reforms. “The memorandum was signed after the IMF hadf announced its agreement,” said Danilyuk.

The minister specified that the President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the head of the NBU have put their signatures from the Ukrainian side. Regarding the conditions stipulated in the document, he did not deny that they cover, pension reform as well as other things.

“In fact, we must understand the main thing the IMF wants, and what we want is a fair, we want balanced pension system,” Daniluk said.

To do this, in his opinion, the head of the Ministry of Finance has to carry out a reform that will balance the Pension Fund and will help to get rid of the deficit.

“Not at once, of course, but it takes time, a certain vector to get rid of the Pension Fund deficit, so that people could get a stable pension and have a clear understanding that in the future the pension will be fair,” he explained.

Also it has been mentioned regarding the land market in the memorandum.

“How many years we haven’t really had the land market, de jure. In practice, it exists, the land is bought, sold, but everything is happening on gray, strange schemes, “said Danilyuk.

He believes that it is very important to get the land market to work, in particular, for the agricultural sector.

“This is our competitive advantage – the agricultural sector, but because of the restrictions that we have set by ourselves, we not only make our citizens poorer, but also artificially limit the potential of the agricultural sector,” the minister argues.

Another equally important reform concerns state-owned banks.

“Now the state controls 55% of the banking system. This is a very high share, and we need to improve the work of these banks as soon as possible so that they do not “warp” the competition, and also plan how to get out of these banks, because the state can not own 55% of the market, this hinders the development of the economy ” , – stated the head of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine.

Let us remind, that a memorandum with the International Financial Fund was signed on March 1, 2017.