Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of IMF Programmes on the Structure of Ukraine’s External Financing

Abstract

The article provides a quantitative assessment of the impact of International Monetary Fund programmes on the volume and structure of Ukraine’s external financing over the period 1994–2026. Drawing on official data from the IMF, the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Ukraine, the study analyses fifteen lending programmes with an average disbursement rate of 53.5%, which points to a systemic mismatch between the intensity of external conditionality and the absorptive capacity of the state apparatus. Two original indicators are proposed and tested: the access multiplier Mg, which captures the total volume of external financing unlocked by each dollar of IMF credit, and the exchange rate sensitivity coefficient Se, which measures the effect of currency depreciation on the debt-to-GDP ratio. Calculations show that in 2025 Mg reached 58.2, meaning that the Fund’s direct share of financial flows fell to 1.7%, yet its conditionality determined access to the remaining 98.3% of external resources. The coefficient Se = 0.835 implies that each percentage point of hryvnia depreciation increases the debt burden by 0.84 p.p., effectively depriving the NBU of exchange rate policy as a tool for supporting exports. Three types of institutional asymmetry in relations with IFIs are identified – informational-methodological (the Fund’s monopoly over DSA), negotiating (cross-conditionality of the EFF, Ukraine Facility and ERA) and institutional (314 measures in the Joint Reform Matrix with a quarterly workload of approximately 20 benchmarks) – which are mutually reinforcing and lock the state apparatus into a reactive mode of operation. The ERA mechanism (USD 37.9 billion) is analysed separately as a channel that converts the geopolitical risk of sanctions stability into a direct fiscal risk for Ukraine – a type of dependency not captured by standard debt risk management models. It is argued that the object of monitoring within the public administration system should not be the debt owed to the IMF as such, but rather the multiplicative effect of programme disruption, where aggregate losses exceed the value of any individual tranche by an order of magnitude.