Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

The IMF is adopting a tough but correct position. Ukraine’s state budget deficit last year exceeded the 5.5 percent of GDP agreed with the IMF, VAT is not refunded automatically despite Azarov's promises, and the cabinet has not yet submitted a pension reform bill to parliament although it had promised the IMF that it would do so by January. Deputy Prime Minister, Serhy Tyhypko, who is in charge of pension reform, forecast last month that parliament would pass a pension reform bill in March (UNIAN, January 18). The pension reform will be unpopular as it provides, as the IMF insisted, for hiking the retirement age for women from the current 55 to 60 years within the next ten years and for male civil servants from 60 to 62 years.
The cabinet is even more reluctant to increase household gas prices from April 2011, also as promised to the IMF last year, in order to reduce the deficit of the state-owned oil and gas company, Naftohaz Ukrainy. First Deputy Prime Minister, Andry Klyuyev, told a press conference on February 2 that the cabinet was against raising natural gas prices for households in either April or May. Klyuyev said this would be discussed with the IMF (UNIAN, February 2). The previous 50 percent price increase last August was welcomed by the IMF, but it was not enough to cover the difference between the high prices that Naftohaz pays for Russian gas and the low prices for which it is obliged to sell gas at home

A  large excerpt from Eurasia Daily Monitor (no link) volume 8 issue 28,  "Kyiv holds fresh talks with the IMF", " . Inflation slowed down to 8.2%. according to Bloomberg.