KIEV, Dec. 9 – Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in a secret letter to the International Monetary Fund, promised to take unpopular measures, including increasing Ukraine’s retirement age, seeking to unlock its $16.4 billion Standby loan from the organization, an opposition lawmaker said Wednesday.

Mykhaylo Papiyev, a lawmaker from the Regions Party and a former social issues minister, said he had learnt about the letter from people close to Tymoshenko.

“In order to accelerate the disbursal of the fourth installment from the IMF before the presidential election, Tymoshenko goes for anything,” Papiyev said. “Even such anti-people commitments as freezing wages, pensions, and social security.”

“And, what’s the most crying is [the commitment] to increase retiring age in 2010 to 65 years [from 60 years] for men and to 60 years [from 55 years] for women,” Papieyv said.

Tymoshenko on Wednesday was not available for comments.

But she has earlier this year denied any plans of increasing the retirement age, a sensitive issue for many people that could turn them against Tymoshenko at the presidential election due in January 2010.

Hryhoriy Nemyria, a deputy prime minister and Tymoshenko’s foreign policy chief, was visiting Washington on Monday for talks with leaders of the IMF over resumption of lending.

Ukraine has largely survived the economic crisis earlier this year due to massive lending from the IMF, which had disbursed $10.6 billion to the country over the past 12 months.

However, the IMF postponed the lending in November after the government had failed to implement economic reforms it had earlier promised, for example the refusal to hike domestic natural gas prices.

Analysts said the government badly needs the money from the IMF – at least $3.4 billion, or 27.2 billion hrynias – to meet 2009 budget revenue projections.

The government needs to raise about 60 billion hryvnias in December alone, or four times more than it has been raising monthly so far this year to meet the projections, analysts said.

“Let me remind the prime minister Tymoshenko that the Cabinet of Ministers is a collegial body and before signing any letters on behalf of the government it must be presented to the society and backed by the majority of ministers,” Papiyev said. “Especially if we’re talking about issues that concern all citizens of Ukraine without exception.” (tl/ez)