Ukraine's international partners, who have promised to provide external financial support to Ukraine as it confronts Russian aggression, are not planning to renounce their commitments. This conviction was expressed in an interview with Ukrinform on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Marrakech by the Ukrainian Minister of Finance Serhiy Marchenko.
"Yes, the partners are ready to fulfill the obligations they undertook when we were preparing the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program together with the International Monetary Fund," the minister said.
He emphasised that international partners have pledged to support Ukraine for at least the four-year period of the program.
"And none of the countries that have signed up to these commitments are going to revise them," Marchenko noted.
In addition, he said that Ukraine receives "sufficient assurances" from the United States and European countries about their readiness to continue to help Ukraine "as long as we need it."
The minister also expressed the opinion that the Ukrainian economy will rely on the support of its partners for a long time.
"The only real way to reduce dependence on external support in our situation is to increase GDP in the long term, which means increasing the size of the domestic market and, accordingly, increasing the tax base. But this is a long-term issue, it cannot be solved instantly," he said.
And even if the war ends tomorrow, Ukraine will still need external injections and the implementation of a five- or even ten-year program to minimise dependence on partner support.