KIEV, June 30 – Ukraine’s economy contracted 20.3% on the year in the first quarter, the government reported Tuesday, breaking its six-month silence on the country’s economic performance during the ongoing financial crisis.

The figure shows Ukraine has been facing its worst economic contraction since 1994, when the country’s gross domestic product shrunk 22.9% on the year following the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

It also shows that the pace of Ukraine’s economic contraction appears to be at least twice as fast as in most of other countries in the region. Russia’s economy, for example, contracted an annual 9.8% in the first quarter.

“These indicators are bad,” President Viktor Yushchenko, a political rival of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said Tuesday.

The Tymoshenko government reported the economic data bowing to mounting pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which had warned earlier this month that any further delays may “start to impede” the lending to the country.

Ukraine relies on the IMF lending for avoiding default on foreign debts this year and next, analysts said. The government hopes to receive $7 billion from the Washington-based lender through the end of the year.

Tymoshenko banned the State Statistics Committee from releasing economic data since January, leaving the country’s businesses clueless on the depth of the economic crisis.

The ban was criticized by various political groups in Ukraine, but had been largely ignored by Tymoshenko.

Yushchenko last week asked law enforcement agencies to investigate whether the ban was legal. Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko was supposed to report his finding to the president Wednesday.

The government lifted the ban shortly after Tymoshenko had met Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, the leader of an IMF team, seeking to secure $7 billion in lending through the end of the year.

Ukraine’s construction sector is the worst hit by the economic crisis this year, recording an annual 54.1% decline in the first quarter, the State Statistics Committee reported.

The country’s processing industry, which includes oil refineries and food processing, dropped 36.5% on the year, while distribution of power, natural gas and water recorded 19.3% plunge, the committee reported.

Yushchenko, who also did not have access to the growth statistics, earlier in June had estimated Ukraine’s economic contraction at between 23% and 25% on the year in the first quarter.

The Accounting Chamber, Ukraine’s independent financial watchdog, after studying manufacturing and other data, had recently estimated the country’s economy had contracted 21.2% on the year in the first quarter.

The Tymoshenko government predicted the economy would grow 0.4% on the year in 2009, but the latest statistics indicate that the country will probably face a major contraction, meaning that the government will not collect planned budget revenues that would expand budget deficit.

“Obviously, this is not a professional approach. This populism,” Yushchenko said.

Despite the steep economic contraction, Tymoshenko said the government managed to collect budget revenue in line with the forecast so far this year.

But Yushchenko said the government has been resorting to tricks, such as collecting 12 billion hryvnias in taxes ahead of schedule and postponing 15 billion hryvnias in rebates of value added tax to exporters.

“I think that this approach does not help businesses to cope with the economic crisis,” Yushchenko said.

The government ran 7 billion hryvnias in budget deficit in the first five months of the year, according to Treasury data, while the 12-month budget deficit was projected at 9 billion hryvnias.

“Concealing the true state of affairs leads to the situation that we cannot receive a [realistic] budget from the government and with it the economic program, the program of reforms, that would be adequate to the challenges that the Ukrainian economy is facing,” he said. (tl/ez)