Ukraine's economy will reach the pre-crisis level of October 2008 in the second quarter of 2013.

This forecast was voiced by the executive director of the International Bleyzer Foundation, Oleg Ustenko, during a round table discussion on forecasts and risks for the Ukrainian economy in Kyiv on Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, the economy of Ukraine, which has so heavily subsided, in contrast to developed economies, still has not returned to the level from which it fell down in October 2008, and is likely to return to it in the second quarter of 2013," Ustenko said.

According to him, Ukraine was one of the countries most severely affected by the 2008 crisis in the global economic environment. "The process was so deep that it would be virtually impossible to influence it in the short term," he said.

Unlike Ukraine, industrialized countries, which have experienced easier economic decline, have long crossed the threshold of October 2008, and feel much better than Ukraine.

According to the economist, even if the crisis did not break out in October 2008, the economy of Ukraine would have fallen all the same, due to the fact that the economic model was tremendously inefficient: "In the pre-crisis period Ukraine did not held reforms aimed at stimulating the development of the domestic economy."

In Ustenko's view, today Ukraine is trying to stimulate economic growth through domestic consumption, which is formed by households and real economy.

"This domestic consumption is encouraged not by the loans so actively growing in 2005-2008 and stimulating private consumption by households, but only at the expense of real income and reinvested profit of enterprises. Due to this attempts are made to restart the economy and give an extra drive for its growth," the economist says.

Ukrinform