KIEV, Dec. 14 – Ukraine hopes to raise 1.5 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from the International Monetary Fund by the end of 2009, acting Finance Minister Ihor Umansky said.

"We had 2.5 billion SDRs on schedule. [The outcome of] our last talks held with the IMF is that they offered 1.5 billion SDRs as an objective amount for this review and, given rather the difficult first quarter, [the allocation of] 1 billion SDRs is to be postponed until the end of the first quarter of 2010," he said.