Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Ukraine’s creditors including Franklin Templeton said they were disappointed with progress on restructuring talks as they submitted a proposal that avoids losses on their principal holdings.

The five-member group said there has been “no substantive engagement” in debt talks since they outlined their terms four weeks ago, according to an e-mailed statement released by the committee on Tuesday. Ukraine is seeking new terms on $23 billion of debt as part of a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund aid agreement to help the country recover from a recession.

“Despite this disappointing lack of progress, the committee has now delivered a detailed restructuring proposal based upon IMF assumptions,” the group said. “This is a compromise that balances the stated debt-reduction interests of Ukraine and one of the investors’ objectives of avoiding a principal reduction.”

Ukraine last month rejected the first proposal of the committee, which owns about $10 billion of the nation’s debt, because it included only a maturity extension. Jaresko reiterated last week that a combination of extensions and writedowns to principal and coupons was required to meet IMF conditions.

The fund is due to arrive in Kiev today to begin a review of Ukraine’s progress on economic objectives set out in its aid program.