国际英语新闻:EU raises 500 mln euros for Ukraine via MFA II program

BRUSSELS, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Tuesday raised 500 million euros (677 million U.S. dollars) on capital markets to fund the first loan tranche for Ukraine under the new macro-financial assistance (MFA II) program.

The funding was raised via European Union (EU) 10-year bond worth 2.6 billion euros, that was increased to 3.2 billion euros, following an initial tap of 100 million euros on May 14.

The loan tranche, which was sold via lead managers Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg and Societe Generale CIB, will be disbursed to Ukraine on June 17.

A total of 30 percent of the bonds went to Asia, 60 percent to the eurozone and 10 percent to other European countries.

MFA II is supporting Ukraine with loans of up to 1 billion euros and is implemented in parallel with the already approved program of 610 million euros (MFA I), totaling 1.61 billion euros.

The first disbursement of 100 million euros under MFA I was made to Ukraine on May 20.

MFA II intended to assist the country economically and financially in the current critical stage of its development. It is part of the package to support Ukraine as announced by the European Commission on March 5.

MFA is an exceptional EU crisis-response instrument available to the EU's neighboring partner countries experiencing severe balance of payments problems. (1 euro = 1.35 U.S. dollars)