KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s finance minister Serhii Marchenko said on Friday that the country was seeking a new four-year lending programme from the IMF, as the country continues to battle against a Russian invasion.
Ukraine’s current $15.5 billion programme with the IMF expires in 2027.
Kyiv is spending about 60% of its total budget to fund the war effort and relies heavily on financial support from its Western allies to cover the cost of pensions, public sector wages and humanitarian spending.
“As you know, there was a recent IMF mission, and we raised the issue of the need for a new programme and the need for its financing,” Marchenko told Ukraine’s parliament.
“Overall, the funds needed to finance a four-year programme could amount to between $150 billion and $170 billion over a four-year period.”
Marchenko also told parliament that the unfunded gap in Ukraine’s budget for 2026 was currently $18.1 billion.
Ukraine’s 2026 budget draft envisages 2.8 trillion hryvnias ($67 billion) in revenue and about 4.8 trillion hryvnias in expenditure.
The finance ministry has said that the draft budget planned for about 2.1 trillion hryvnias ($50 billion) in foreign financing next year.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko, writing by Max Hunder, Editing by Alex Richardson)
