By KYIV. Dec 22 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies of the Program Monitoring with Board Involvement (PMB) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides for reforming the social assistance framework, taking into account the needs of IDPs and war veterans.
"We intend to protect the current level of social assistance for the most vulnerable groups in our population. The war has resulted in the emergence of new vulnerable groups of population [e.g., IDPs, war veterans], whose needs should be factored into future reforms of the social assistance framework," according to the document published on the website of the Ministry of Finance on Thursday.
"With this in mind, we will prepare a concept note that would lay out our thinking on how to approach reforms of the social safety net – with the aim to achieve targeted, adequate, and efficiently delivered social assistance to the population, including the needs of these emerging categories," the memorandum reads.
It is also noted that safeguarding fiscal sustainability will be a key pillar of the concept note.
"We also intend to work on a medium-term strategy to transition the current wage bill framework that has a significant defense and security component to a peace-time wage bill framework," the document notes.
In addition, the memorandum provides that there will be monitoring of payment arrears in the general government sector.
"To support these goals, we will develop an action plan to prevent and clear arrears over the course of the 2023 Budget and beyond [Structural Benchmark, end-January 2023]," the document notes.
