Money for a whole year, agreed in advance

Anyone who has run a company on month-to-month credit knows the difference between having money and knowing you will have money. They are not the same thing, and the second is worth more.

For ten months Ukrainian public finance had been managed tranche by tranche. In December 2022 the European Union agreed a macro-financial assistance package covering the whole of the following year, disbursed in regular instalments against agreed conditions.

What predictability buys

It lets a finance ministry write a budget rather than a forecast. It lets a hospital sign an annual supply contract instead of ordering monthly. It lets the central bank plan reserves rather than defend them week by week. And it removes the incentive to print money, which is how wartime budgets usually end in inflation.

This is also where the reform conditionality did real work: the instalments were tied to agreed commitments, which gave the reform agenda a payment schedule attached to it.