EVEN before the Russian invasion of the east of the country last year, the task of reforming Ukraine’s economy was daunting. Its people are poorer than they were when the Soviet Union ended (see chart 1). Corruption pervades Ukrainian life. The traffic police demand bribes at random and newspapers carry advertisements for companies that will forge exam papers for you. To this set of chronic problems, the war has added acute ones: the destruction of much of the country’s industrial base, spooked investors and a balance-of-payments crisis. If Ukraine is to build a stable economy, it must fix the public finances, shake up the all-important gas sector and stamp down on corruption against the backdrop of an unresolved conflict.
Ukraine’s public debt is around 100% of GDP, much of it denominated in foreign currency. Already unsustainable, its debt burden is on an upward path: in the first quarter of 2015, Ukrainian GDP...
from The Economist: Finance and economics http://ift.tt/1K5fvfF
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