KIEV (Reuters) - A political crisis in Ukraine threatens to derail a Western-backed reform drive and thwart attempts to pull its conflict-hit economy out of a two-year recession, the World Bank's country director for Ukrainesaid on Friday.
Lawmakers are under pressure to form a new coalition to end a deadlock that threatens snap parliamentary elections and has delayed disbursement of $1.7 billion (£1.19 billion) from the International Monetary Fund and other foreign loans.
"The current political crisis poses a very serious threat to the still fragile recovery and exposes a serious enough threat to continued economic reforms," the World Bank's Qimiao Fan said at a briefing. "It's very important in our view that the political crisis is resolved as quickly as possible."
The World Bank kept its forecast for Ukraine's 2016 economic growth unchanged at 1 percent and said it saw inflation slowing to 15 percent this year, compared with a previous forecast of 23.4 percent.
On Thursday, the results of a Reuters poll of 16 Ukrainian banks and brokerages forecast Ukraine's economy would grow 1.4 percent in 2016 after contracting 9.9 percent in 2015 and 6.6 percent in 2014.
