Ukraine has money to settle Russian gas debt - Kudrin

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UNITED NATIONS, June 25 (Itar-Tass) - Kiev has money for the
settlement of debts for Russian natural gas, Russian Vice Prime Minister
and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Russian journalists on Wednesday.
"According to our estimates, by the results of consultations with the IMF,
Ukraine has money for the settlement of debts," he said.
As of June 1, Ukraine's gold and currency reserves accounted for more
than 27 billion US dollars, the Russian minister noted. "This is
considerably larger than all the payments it has to make," he added.
Besides, the RF vice prime minister continued, in June Ukraine gets
from the International Monetary Fund more than 6 billion US dollars. "The
IMF programme itself is designed so that Ukraine could secure its foreign
payments - on debts, goods, import to which natural gas also belongs,"
Kudrin emphasised. "The IMF according to its tasks must create such a
programme that would balance the economy and foreign payments (of the
country) so that the exchange rate be maintained and to prevent a shock in
the economy," he noted.
Kudrin also referred to an IMF report in which it is said that the
"foreign, that is currency financing of Ukraine is sufficient for the
fulfilment of its obligations."
"The problem now is that inside Ukraine the Naftogaz company has
sufficient resources," the RF finance minister continued. "Therefore it
should take either a loan or subsidy from the government (of Ukraine) in
order to convert in dollars that it has enough and pay for gas," he
stressed.
If the Naftogaz company "that is a consumer of Russian gas has
insufficient funds for the payment, it should ask help from the Ukrainian
government or take them from the gold and currency reserves," Kudrin said.
According to him, Russia in such cases "had acted this way." "So in 1998
and this year when our Russian companies had insufficiency of funds for
the settlement of foreign debts we adopted a law that stipulated that they
could be taken from the gold and currency reserves and a loan could be
provided to our companies for the settlement of their foreign debts, for
refinancing of the debt," the RF vice prime minister stressed.
-0-ezh