Kiev says IMF mission to visit Ukraine soon

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pledged to send a mission to Kiev soon, the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States said Monday.

The pledge was made during a meeting between IMF chief Christine Lagarde and Ukrainian central bank governor Valeria Gontareva in Washington, the embassy said in a statement.

"Lagarde underlined that the fund is prepared to continue to support our country on its way of economic transformations and stated that the IMF mission will visit Ukraine in the nearest time," said the statement.

For her part, Gontareva said the implementation of Ukraine's reforms, prescribed in a cooperation program with the IMF, was one of the top priorities for her country.

The global lender has put on hold its 17.5-billion-U.S.-dollar bailout program for recession-hit Ukraine over a political crisis in the country and slow progress in carrying out reforms and combating corruption.

After Kiev approved a new government and formed a new parliamentary coalition last week, the IMF voiced its readiness to unlock the aid if Ukraine implements all the reforms required under the program.

The four-year cooperation program for Ukraine was approved by the IMF in March 2015 to keep the country's ailing economy afloat amid economic and political turbulence.

The program requested Ukraine to implement a series of economic reforms, including those in financial, judicial and energy sectors.

Last year, Ukraine received a total of 6.7 billion dollars from the global lender as two tranches of the aid package. Endi