It appears that against almost all expectations, Ukraine's fractious Orange alliance are about to bury the hatchet, kiss and make up. Speaker of the Rada Vladimir Litvin announced Tuesday that a new deal between President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko bloc was imminent. On Wednesday Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc confirmed the formation of the new alliance. Our Ukraine has refused to confirm those statements, but said in a statement that negotiations are "going well."
[…] Formalization of the tentative alliance between the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and the Party of the Regions might have preserved sympathy in the West while currying favor in the Kremlin, and, crucially, allowing much needed privatization projects to go ahead. And it is not as if it will be a strong government with a mandate to reform. The majority will be slim (there are 450 seats in the Rada. Together the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (156), Our Ukraine (72) and the Litvin bloc (20) will have 248. But the Kyiv Post reported Wednesday that less than a majority of these voted for Litvin's candidacy as speaker.
[…] Ukraine is having a particularly bad crisis. Its key metal and mining industries, especially steel, had fuelled an economic boom despite the unending political instability. Those industries have now entered a slump. The national currency, the hryvnia, has depreciated sharply, and that in turn is pushing inflation worryingly high. The number of non performing loans has increased proportionately, as many that were measured in foreign currency now cost as much as 50 percent more to pay back in the national currency. "The one good thing at the moment is that the central bank wants to play it safe – it is not injecting as much foreign currency into the market as it could. That gives us some kind of insurance, if the slump in metals or mining continues for the entire first half of next year," said Gubachov. "But if it continues beyond that, we're in trouble."
Read the complete article: The Apparent Reformation of the Governing Orange Alliance in Ukraine Will Suffer the Same Problems as Its Previous Incarnation, but Face More Economic Challenges
[…] Formalization of the tentative alliance between the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and the Party of the Regions might have preserved sympathy in the West while currying favor in the Kremlin, and, crucially, allowing much needed privatization projects to go ahead. And it is not as if it will be a strong government with a mandate to reform. The majority will be slim (there are 450 seats in the Rada. Together the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (156), Our Ukraine (72) and the Litvin bloc (20) will have 248. But the Kyiv Post reported Wednesday that less than a majority of these voted for Litvin's candidacy as speaker.
[…] Ukraine is having a particularly bad crisis. Its key metal and mining industries, especially steel, had fuelled an economic boom despite the unending political instability. Those industries have now entered a slump. The national currency, the hryvnia, has depreciated sharply, and that in turn is pushing inflation worryingly high. The number of non performing loans has increased proportionately, as many that were measured in foreign currency now cost as much as 50 percent more to pay back in the national currency. "The one good thing at the moment is that the central bank wants to play it safe – it is not injecting as much foreign currency into the market as it could. That gives us some kind of insurance, if the slump in metals or mining continues for the entire first half of next year," said Gubachov. "But if it continues beyond that, we're in trouble."
Read the complete article: The Apparent Reformation of the Governing Orange Alliance in Ukraine Will Suffer the Same Problems as Its Previous Incarnation, but Face More Economic Challenges
