The International Monetary Fund has approved a new four-year Extended Fund Facility for Ukraine worth $8.1 billion, with the first tranche of approximately $1.5 billion expected to arrive shortly, Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced.
The funds will go toward financing Ukraine's budget deficit and supporting macrofinancial stability, Svyrydenko said.
"The program supported by the IMF is part of a broader financial framework designed to cover the projected state budget deficit of $136.5 billion over four years," she said.
The deal caps months of negotiations that at times ran into politically sensitive territory. Ukraine and the IMF agreed on the parameters of the program back in November 2025. At that stage, the arrangement included 16 structural benchmarks to be met by the government and parliament, plus four mandatory prior actions — prerequisites without which the program could not launch.
Those prior actions proved contentious. Among them were requirements to introduce VAT for individual entrepreneurs (known in Ukraine as FOPs), impose duties on parcels, tax digital platforms, and maintain the wartime military levy.
In December 2025, the Finance Ministry put forward a draft law requiring FOPs earning over 1 million hryvnias annually to pay VAT. The proposal drew a backlash. In response, the ministry began preparing a softer version raising the threshold to 2 million or 4 million hryvnias per year, according to Servant of the People faction leader David Arakhamia, as reported by Bloomberg.
The standoff was ultimately resolved differently. On 14 February, Svyrydenko told journalists that the IMF had agreed to drop all four prior actions for the new lending program — effectively removing the VAT-for-FOPs requirement and the other preconditions that had stalled progress.
