Tymoshenko Hopes Ukraine's Cooperation With International Monetary Fund Will Resume In Coming Weeks

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said she hopes that Ukraine will resume its cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and that the country will get a second tranche from the fund in the coming weeks.
I hope and believe that Ukraine-IMF cooperation will continue in the coming weeks, and that Ukraine will get the second tranche," she told journalists in Brussels on Thursday, following a summit of the European People's Party.Tymoshenko said that "much attention is being paid" to cooperation between Ukraine and the IMF. She expressed hope that the Ukrainian parliament would soon pass the laws needed to resume cooperation with the IMF.She said that the question of Ukraine-IMF relations had been discussed during her meeting with the EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana.Tymoshenko also said that the economic and financial situation in Ukraine is similar to the situation in most countries around the world, and that Ukraine uses "the same range of measures being used by most countries."She said that Ukraine had made the right choice after planning the deficit of its state budget for 2009 at 3%."We were absolutely right not to foresee a zero deficit of the budget," she said, adding that she had drawn this conclusion after a discussion of measures being taken by European countries to tackle the economic crisis.Tymoshenko said that most officials predicted during the summit that 2012-2013 would be the turning point in countering the crisis, and after then economic growth would resume."However, everybody wants to believe that late in 2009 the anti-crisis measures of foreign countries will be effective and that stabilization will start," she said.She said that the participants in the summit had paid a great deal of attention to the social element of the crisis."Market mechanisms should be socially-oriented amid the crisis," she said.Tymoshenko said that the summit had also focused on the transparency of the banking system and the need to take measures to stabilize it.