KYIV -- The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) communications director Gerry Rice recently revealed that the review of Ukraine's next IMF tranche should be complete soon.

We reached our to economist, Ukraine expert and freqeunt UBJ contributor Timothy Ash to hear his views on what may in fact happen in the coming weeks.

Timothy Ash

LONDON -- Not really my impression. Interesting to hear Rice on the wires, but I think we are a bit further from a board sign off than this implies.

Local view in Kyiv is that still significant foot dragging over some of the anti corruption areas which really are now so critical to the longer term success of the Ukrainian economy.

Very significant progress has been made by Ukraine over the past two years across a range of reform areas, and macro stabilisation is a real achievement. The economy could be poised for take off, but the determinant of whether this will be be 2-3%or 5% will be whether all the business environment stuff gets done which means really getting serious on the anti corruption gig, rather than window dressing. This is still the number one challenge for Ukraine, and I guess the IMF still has some leverage now, and perhaps will be minded to use it to get maximum reforms up front. I guess if we wait for the fourth review this could be months and months down the line with key reform time wasted in the interim.

Timothy Ash is a senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, London

Posted Feb. 24, 2017