Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the Ambassador of Japan in Ukraine signed an Agreement on financial assistance for policy development

On Friday, 4 December, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Ambassador of Japan in Ukraine Shigeki Sumi inked the Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of Japan on Economic Reform Development Policy Loan.

The signing ceremony was attended by Minister of Finance of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko and Vice-President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Kenichi Tomioshi.

Under the Loan Agreement, the Government of Japan provides financial assistance to Ukraine worth ¥ 36.969 billion yen (approximately US$ 300 million), as co-financing tied to the World Bank’s 'Development Policy Loan (DPL-II)';

Arseniy Yatsenyuk expressed gratitude to the Government of Japan for granting to Ukraine the financial support. He noted that this loan is provided for a term of 20 years with a six-year-grace period and under 1% interest rate per annum.

The Prime Minister of Ukraine emphasized the funds were provided as Ukraine fully complies with the programme of cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international donors: "A condition of further support in the first place is the stay of Ukraine in the program with the International Monetary Fund, which absolutely coincides with the programme for the Government and a coalition agreement".

"Over the period of 21 months, we have demonstrated political will for real reforms, which were highly assessed by our international partners and G7, in which Japan will be the chair next year", he stressed.

"It is hard to gain trust, but easy to lose. I therefore call on all political forces part of the coalition to pursue the right path of reforms that meet both our internal commitments to the people of Ukraine and our external obligations to foreign creditors," accentuated Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

For this purpose, according to the Head of the Government, the adoption of a new budget and new tax system "should be simultaneous processes". He reminded that the Government had developed a draft Tax Code and a draft law of Ukraine on the State Budget.

"We look forward to the active participation of members of the Parliament in the work on these bills. In the last five days we have been working with MPs, and within these five days there were not more than five MPs who took an active part in discussions on the budget and tax reforms," he stressed.

Further, the Government is ready to hold substantive discussions with members of Parliament “to urgently adopt two basic draft laws on budget and the tax reform."

He reminded about one of the largest projects of bilateral cooperation with the Government of Japan - for the ‘Bortnychi Sewage Treatment Plant Modernization Project’ worth US$ 1 billion.

The Prime Minister stressed that Ukraine highly appreciates the support of the Government of Japan in providing technical advice to stabilize Ukrainian financial and banking sector.