KIEV, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine has requested around 2 billion U.S. dollars in emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome an "extremely difficult" financial situation, the country's Deputy Prime Minister Hryhoriy Nemyria said on Friday.

    "Meeting payments in the next three months will be extremely difficult without the IMF funding," Nemyria said in an statement.

    "Wait and see is not an option. The cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action and may aggravate the situation in the wider region," added Nemyria.

    The Eastern European country has received 11 billion dollars out of a 16.4-billion-dollar IMF loan.

    The rest of the money was suspended by the IMF after it said Ukraine needed to implement economic reforms before it would hand over any more.

    Nemyria visited IMF headquarters in Washington D.C. this week in a bid to secure the release of the money. The IMF has postponed the disbursement since early November.

    Cooperation with the IMF has been suspended twice after Ukraine failed to keep pledges to cut the budget as political leaders battled ahead of the elections. The government of Ukraine also refused to raise natural gas prices for households and failed to adopt laws to stabilize the financial system.

    Ukraine's economy contracted an annual 15.9 percent in the third quarter after shrinking 17.8 percent in the second quarter and a record of 20.3 percent in the first. It is the first recession in a decade.