Ukraine Negotiates USD 1 Billion Credit Line With World Bank

KIEV, Ukraine -- World Bank is ready to increase the volume of annual credit to Ukraine to USD 1 billion due to high efficiency of using the bank's assets. This statement was made at the Tokyo meeting between the World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia region Philippe Le Houérou and Minister of Trade and Economic Development of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, reports LB. The vice president of the World Bank noted that Ukraine had significantly improved its portfolio of the World Bank investment projects and provided a record high level of the bank's assets application compared to previous years, announced the Ukrainian Ministry of Trade and Economic Development. Notably, according to the World Bank's country partnership strategy 2012-2016 for Ukraine, which was announced in February 2012, the international financial institution agreed to facilitate loans to Ukraine in the amount of up to USD 500 million per annum with USD 400 million coming from its own assets. The Bank has informed of the possibility to increase the loan limit and the range of tools in the event of acceleration of reforms and improvement of the governance. At the same time it promised to leave the funding at moderate level if the implementation of reforms falters. The most recent World Bank - EU report on the effectiveness of state budget management showed that Ukraine had fallen into the category of countries that provide a significant amount of budget information to its citizens. "In fact, budget transparency, including availability of budget information to the public, is one of the world's best," said Oleksiy Balabushko, Public Sector Economist at World Bank, during the presentation of the report. Ukraine scored 62 points on the scale of availability of budget information to the public. This is comparable to Czech Republic (62 points) and Spain (63). Ukraine joined World Bank in 1992. So far, the organization has provided over USD 7 billion in loans for 39 projects in Ukraine. The last project was the construction/repair works of the Kiev-Kharkiv and Poltava-Lubny highway which required about USD 450 million of the World Bank investment.