© RIA Novosti / Vitaliy Ankov
"We've lost a quarter of the Ukrainian economy. Hundreds of facilities were closed because of war..."Yatsenyuk said on Tuesday in a conference call to regional governors over budget fulfillment.
At the same time the government managed to collect more in taxes than in the previous year, he added.
Talking about Ukraine's fiscal position, Yatsenyuk said the government had managed to accumulate almost $670 million in its single treasury account.
"I had a look at the latest statistics. A year ago, the single treasury account held 108,000 hryvnia ($4,600), this morning there were 15.5 billion hryvnia ($670 million)," he said.
The funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will help Ukraine service external debt, while tax revenues will be used to finance defense and social benefits, he added.
On March 13 the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance confirmed it had received the first tranche of $5 billion as part of the IMF's four-year bailout program. The total amount of money to be granted to Ukraine from all other foreign creditors will be about $40 billion.
Earlier in March Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalia Jaresko said the IMF's $17.5 billion would not be enough to revive the country's ailing economy, and that the government would seek more financial assistance from international lenders.
Although the Ukrainian government expects the international aid to help the country overcome the crisis in the short-term, experts suggest the terms of imposing austerity measures would only make the situation worse, as many Ukrainians already live below the poverty line and further cuts in social spending would bring no good. Ukraine's GDP has shrunk 6.5 percent since the crisis started and the currency has lost around 80 percent of its value. Inflation is expected to hit 27 percent by the end of 2015.
Reader Comments
Russia needs to step back and let the US and EU bail out Ukraine. They broke it, they should have to pay for it.
Unfortunately, when it becomes a failed state on the order of Somalia or Yemen, it will be festering on the borders of the EU and Russia, but will be 6,000 miles away from the US. Har, har, har.
Like Sergei Glazyev said, every time the US provokes a war in Europe, which has happened several times already, the US profits handsomely while Europe foots the bill.
The European people know this, but their so-called leaders pretend to be unaware of this fact. "See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.... What, me worry?"
What the people need to do is throw the two-faced bums out of Brussels, and out of the various national capitals where they sit inside their gated palaces, and in their chauffeur-driven Mercedes limousines, immune from the effects of their criminality, and rake in the bribes and corruption from Uncle Shemuel.
When will we see the guillotine re-erected to serve justice to these vampires? Not soon enough.