The International Monetary Fund maintained its real GDP growth forecast for Ukraine for 2024 within 3-4% and slightly improved forecasts for inflation, public debt and current account deficit. This is stated in the updated IMF forecast, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
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GDP
The expectation of Ukraine's nominal GDP for this year has been raised to 7.75 trillion. UAH from 7.64 trillion. UAH in December last year, although the forecast for next year was left virtually unchanged – 8.86 trillion.
This is largely due to the revision of the GDP growth estimate last year from 4.5% to 5% and, accordingly, with nominal GDP up to UAH 6.50 trillion from UAH 6.43 trillion.
In the structure of GDP growth, the IMF now expects a slightly smaller contribution from domestic demand, private consumption and investment, but all this is offset by a better situation with net exports.
Inflation
Inflation forecast for 2024 (December by December) The fund improved to 8.5% from 9.5%, real income growth to 9.8% from 8.5%, although the unemployment estimate worsened to 14.5% from 13.9%.
Budget deficit
As for the budget, the IMF slightly reduced its deficit estimate (excluding grants) to 20.2% of GDP from 20.4% of GDP. In terms of financing, the expectation of grant funding has been improved to 6.5% of GDP from 4.7% of GDP while other external funding has been reduced to 11.8% of GDP from 13.7% of GDP and domestic funding to 2% of GDP from 2.1% of GDP .
Public debt
As a result, the forecast for total government debt at the end of this year has been improved to 94% of GDP from 96.7%, however The improvement in its estimate at the end of 2023 to 82.9% of GDP from 87.1% of GDP also had an impact.
Current account deficit
New forecast of the current account deficit of Ukraine in 2024 – 5.7% of GDP instead of 7.1% of GDP in December materials, foreign direct investment – 2.2% of GDP instead of 1.2% of GDP. The estimate of gross international reserves at the end of this year has been improved to $42.1 billion from $40.9 billion.
Loans
The IMF, in its updated macro forecast, also expects an increase in loans in 2024 by 8.5 %, which is slightly worse than the December estimate of 9.5%, but the likely reason for this adjustment is a sharp improvement in the estimate for the decline in the loan portfolio in 2023 to 0.5% from 7.5%.