OREANDA-NEWS. On January 21, Minister of Finance of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko, together with National Bank of Ukraine Governor Valeria Gontareva, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin, and Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Borys Lozhkin, took part in the meeting of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko with Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde during the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.

The IMF is one of the major international partners who help Ukraine in the implementation of many reforms in the country, such as the fight against corruption, public finance management, reform of the energy market, and banking sector reform.

The key topics of this meeting were a revised text of the Memorandum between Ukraine and the IMF as well as Ukraine’s reforms progress. Among other things discussed with the IMF Managing Director were the importance of successful adoption by Ukraine’s Parliament of a state budget for 2016 with the significant reduction of public finance spending from 53% of GDP in 2015 to a forecasted 44% of GDP in 2016; the revolutionary reduction of a tax burden on salaries by halving the payroll tax without increasing the budget deficit.

"We discussed the final text of the revised Memorandum between Ukraine and the IMF, and the next steps in our reforms program. After final agreement of the text, we look forward to a successful review by the IMF Board and the release of the third tranche. This should increase the reserves of the National Bank and will provide greater stability to the banking sector and currency,” Minister Jaresko noted following the meeting with Christine Lagarde.