Volodymyr Groysman was appointed new Ukrainian prime minister on April 14 after the resignation of his predecessor, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The new Ukrainian cabinet has been approved the same day. The IMF pledged a $17.5-billion 4-year loan for Ukraine in exchange for political reforms in March 2015.
"Primarily, this [new government] means that we can resume the discussion about the implementation of the Ukrainian IMF program. Previously, it was rather difficult to seriously discuss the future steps in this direction. Now there is someone we can speak with," Lipton told the Russian-language version of the Ukrainskaya Pravda news portal.
"We must not allow the rollback of the reforms that have already been carried out. The budget is almost balanced, the exchange rate has adjusted, the impact of the devaluation has been stopped, monetary policy has been tempered, losses from the gas sector have been significantly reduced – so it is important not to let these processes retreat," he stressed.
"There is also an issue of further tariff hikes, which we will have to discuss as key to Ukraine’s financial and energy independence," the official added.
Ukraine was required to increase natural gas tariffs on April 1, as part of the memorandum of cooperation with the IMF. The outgoing government postponed the tariff hike for households and heating supply companies by a month.
