(Bloomberg) --
The International Monetary Fund is sending a small mission to Ukraine for talks on economic expansion as the government struggles to finalize a $5.5 billion loan.
The team will visit Ukraine “for technical discussions on policies to achieve stronger growth and safeguard stability,” IMF resident representative in Ukraine Goesta Ljungman said Tuesday in an emailed statement. No time frame for the visit was given.
Ukraine expected the loan to have been approved in September. But a unresolved issues -- including legal challenges related to the 2016 nationalization of Privatbank, questions over central bank independence and difficulties in approval of farmland reform -- have delayed the deal.
While the staff-level agreement was sealed in December and the government hoped for program approval in January, little progress has been made on the outstanding issues. The economy grew at the slowest pace in three years in the fourth quarter.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kateryna Choursina in Kyiv at kchoursina@bloomberg.net;Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Rose at rrose10@bloomberg.net, Andrea Dudik, Andrew Langley
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