The Ministry
of Finance welcomes the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of Draft Law No. 3677
that will prolong the validity term of the law adopted in May 2015, which
provides grounds for the introduction of temporary suspension of payments under
certain external debt obligations. This step will facilitate the restructuring
of external debt obligations.
The Ministry
of Finance is actively working on the recovery of the public finance system and
on the reduction of the debt burden on the state budget. For this purpose, last
year the Ministry of Finance successfully implemented the restructuring of 13
out of 14 series of sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed Eurobonds within the
perimeter of the sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed debt restructuring.
Therefore, currently more than US$19.4 billion out of the total amount of the
external debt obligations of Ukraine have already been restructured.
At the
same time, the issues regarding the restructuring of US$3 billion sovereign
notes due in December 2015 and the sovereign-guaranteed debt of Ukravtotor amounting
to US$100 million have not been settled.
The Ministry
of Finance is trying to reach an agreement with creditors under these external
debt obligations that will allow achieving targets of the restructuring
established under the IMF-supported Extended Fund Facility Programme for
Ukraine. At the same time, during negotiation of the restructuring of these
debt obligations, in December 2015 the Government was forced to introduce
temporary suspension of payments under such debts according to the Law of
Ukraine “On Certain Aspects of Transactions with Sovereign Debt, Sovereign-Guaranteed
Debt and Local Debt”.
Taking into account that the validity term of the Law of Ukraine “On
Certain Aspects of Transactions with Sovereign Debt, Sovereign-Guaranteed Debt
and Local Debt” expires on 1 July 2016, the Ministry of Finance initiated the
cancellation of the final effective date of this law, which will provide
Ukraine with sufficient time for the restructuring of the said external debt
obligations. If the holders of sovereign notes allegedly due in December 2015
and the creditor under Ukravtodor’s sovereign-guaranteed loan agree
to restructure the said debt obligations, the temporary suspension of payments
under the respective debt obligation will be terminated on the date of the
respective restructuring transactions and the change of terms of the respective
debt obligation.
No comments:
Post a Comment