WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 – Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund reached an agreement on $5.5 billion three-year lending program to support the country’s economic reforms and growth, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said Saturday.

The deal was finalized following “a very constructive” phone call between Georgieva and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist, assumed her IMF role on October 1, while Zelenskiy took office in Ukraine on May 20 after an electoral victory over predecessor Petro Poroshenko.

“During our conversation, I commended [Zelenskiy] for the impressive progress that he and his government have made in the past few months in advancing reforms and continuing with sound economic policies,” Georgieva said in a statement.

She said the three-year plan is subject to approval by the IMF executive board and that the “effectiveness of the arrangement will be conditional on the implementation of a set of prior actions.”

“The president and I agreed that Ukraine’s economic success depends crucially on strengthening the rule of law, enhancing the integrity of the judiciary, and reducing the role of vested interests in the economy,” she said.

Georgieva also said it was “paramount to safeguard the gains made in cleaning up the banking system and recover the large costs to the taxpayers from bank resolutions.”

In September, the IMF said that fighting corruption would be a key component of any new lending program that Ukraine receives.

Before his appointment in August, Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said Kyiv wanted to replace the existing $3.9 billion standby arrangement with the IMF that expires at year-end and replace it with a longer-term program.

One “important element of the discussions,” IMF Communications Director Gerry Rice said at the time, was the “importance of creating an effective anti-corruption framework,” which has been a “critical element of our engagement with Ukraine for the last few years.”

Ukraine ranks 120th out of 180 countries on watchdog Transparency International’s perceived corruption index. (tl/rfe/ez)