KIEV, Feb. 4 – The International Monetary Fund on Thursday sent a senior official to Ukraine amid mounting concerns the government has been failing to do enough to address the country’s worst economic crisis.

Marek Belka, the director of the IMF’s European department, told President Viktor Yushchenko there were “serious problems” in the way the government has been implementing its anti-crisis measures.

“It must be clear that [my visit] is a sign of serious problems in both the way the economy performs and in the status of implementing our joint [anti-crisis] program,” Belka told Yushchenko, according to report by the presidential press service.

Ukraine depends on the IMF for averting default on its foreign debt obligations this year and next, while the failure to implement the program may postpone the IMF’s $16.4 billion emergency lending.

Ukraine received the first payment of $4.5 billion in November 2008, and hopes to get three more similar payments from the IMF over the next two years to avert the default.

An IMF team has been working in Ukraine since January 20 on a mission to check whether the country can qualify for the next installment of the emergency assistance.

Belka’s visit apparently suggests the team had failed to collect enough evidence that the government had been on track with the anti-crisis program.

Once of the IMF’s biggest concern was the quickly widening budget deficit and the government’s failure to address the issue by cutting the spending.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in a recent letter to Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, refused to submit any bills cutting the spending, as she believes the economy would start to recover in June.

Analysts said any spending cuts and other unpopular measures may hurt Tymoshenko’s support rating ahead of the next presidential election due in less than 12 months.

Yushchenko has recently urged the government to submit to Parliament amendments to the 2009 budget to cutting the spending, while Tymoshenko had declined to do so, saying that budget revenue were on target.

But the office of Yushchneko recently suggested the government may run a deficit as high as 70 billion hryvnias in 2009, and has been seeking to get control over the National Bank of Ukraine to print money to cover the gap.

The government earlier forecast its revenue at 238.9 billion hryvnias in 2009, while setting the spending at 267.3 billion hryvnias. (nr/ez)