KIEV, March 30 - The government and major oil companies, including Lukoil and TNK-BP, on Wednesday signed a memorandum that calls for increasing oil imports and oil refining in Ukraine.

The memorandum comes as the government has been seeking to encourage domestic oil refineries to boost output of gasoline and diesel fuel in order to stabilize domestic prices.

“Over past years, unfortunately, the volume of oil refining by our oil refineries was falling and the share of gasoline imports had been increasing,” Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said before signing the memorandum. “This, of course, had a negative impact on prices and led to exceptional dependence of our market on world market prices.”