KIEV, Jan. 27 – Ukraine’s biggest opposition group on Tuesday called for an urgent parliamentary investigation into a secret memo allegedly written by Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk and suggesting the economy was about to collapse.

The 24-page memo, apparently submitted to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and later leaked to the media, says a third of Ukraine’s industry has been wiped out by the ongoing global economic crisis.

It also described as “too optimistic” the Finance Ministry’s own forecast made several weeks ago that had suggested the economy would contract by 5% in 2009.

“We entered an extremely serious and deep crisis,” reads the memo obtained and published by Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper. “Ukraine’s [economic] situation is the worst in the world.”

Ukraine was one of the first countries to qualify last year for International Monetary Fund assistance, obtaining a $16 billion emergency loan from the group reaction to the international credit crunch and the falling price of steel, the country’s main export.

The hryvnia, the country’s national currency, lost 50% of its value against the U.S. dollar over the past four months, while the National Bank of Ukraine has been selling dollars from its reserves seeking to stop further decline.

For most of the last year, Ukraine has been battling high inflation that at some point had exceeded 32% over a 12-month period, one of the worst such indicators in the world. The government curbed inflation in the summer, but analysts said consumer prices were on the rise again.

The memo has suggested that the worst is probably yet to come, underscoring that the economy will probably be experiencing unprecedented pressure during the next 12 months.

Tymoshenko apparently told Pynzenyk to scrap the memo and not to show it to anybody. She recently said there were signs suggesting the Ukrainian economy would recover by June.

The Finance Ministry on Tuesday refused to comment on the memo.

But the Regions Party, the largest opposition group, which has long accused Tymoshenko of mismanaging the economy, on Tuesday called for the parliamentary investigation into whether the government has been concealing important information about the state of the economy.

“The facts mentioned in the memo, if proved to be true, show that Ukraine is about to be swept by an economic catastrophe unseen since acquiring the independence [in 1991],” the Regions Party said in a statement.

“Secondly, the current government, and its leader, are desperately trying to conceal the real status of the economy from the public,” the statement said.

The opposition group said it will immediately create a special commission in Parliament to investigate the memo. It will also discuss the issue at an upcoming meeting of its “shadow” government, run by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of the Regions Party.

The memo suggested that Ukraine will face a major budget deficit this year and the government will soon be unable to pay out pensions and other social payments.

Also, Ukraine will not be able to borrow money internationally as countries with such [big] budget deficits “are not given money,” the memo said.

The newspaper said after Tymoshenko had scrapped the memo, Pynzenyk had requested a meeting with President Viktor Yushchenko to address the same issue, seeking urgent action on the economy.

“Without an exaggeration, this [memo] today is the government’s biggest secret,” the newspaper said. (tl/ez)