Ukraine will take years to decide between Russia and the west, if it ever does. Sadly, its foreign exchange reserves do not have the luxury of time. While protests against the rejection of an EU free trade deal go on in the Kievan cold, watch out for Ukraine’s ebbing $20bn reserves. These cover about two and a half months of imports, below the three that can start alarm bells ringing at the IMF, and worse than the ratio for Egypt, a country in a similar slow-motion foreign exchange crisis.
An overvalued currency peg is partly to blame. Non-deliverable forwards for the hryvnia price in a 15 per cent drop against the dollar in a year’s time. Even so, reserves must withstand $10bn of external debt maturing in 2014 – a year when Ukraine has to find a friend with money to replace market access, if not a long-term partner.
This is not a debt crisis per se: a 43 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio would normally say Ukraine avoids default, despite its recession, and that even if it does not, haircuts would be mild. It is not hard to see why Franklin Templeton has made a $5bn bet on Ukrainian debt this year. Yields are above 10 per cent. Still, Argentina defaulted in 2001 with 50 per cent of debt to GDP. Ukraine’s current account deficit is the problem. The IMF sees this at 7 per cent out to 2018, without structural reform. Ukraine’s banks cannot top up the forex reserves: their $16bn in foreign assets is swamped by $23bn in foreign liabilities, says Exotix.