KIEV -- Ukraine, often dubbed one of the world's economic basketcases, has seen monthly inflation fall from 90 percent to just over 5 percent a month over the last six months.At the same time, the Ukrainian coupon, one of the world's most derided currencies, has gained against the dollar to the amazement of currency traders.Such progress appears to be an economic miracle. Yet both Russian and international observers say that these trends are likely to be temporary and do not suggest a healing of the troubled Ukrainian economy."Financial stabilization has been achieved not by market means, but by centralized government control," explained Yury Nechayev, a director at the Center for Market Reform, a private non-profit group. "Before they printed money and spread it into the economy; now they are squeezing it out."In terms of pure statistics, however, the results are impressive when compared to Russia. In May, for example, Ukraine, a country the size of France with a population of 52 million, had a 5.2 percent inflation rate, compared to 8.1 percent in Russia, according to government statistics. The numbers have been comparatively lower in Ukraine since March, though Russian monthly inflation fell to 4.8 percent in June.The Ukrainian coupon, which soared above 50,000 to the dollar last month, is now trading at roughly 45,000 on the street. The ruble has steadily lost value over the same period. It is important to note, however, that because Ukraine's leaders have resisted economic reform, they have more control over the economy than Russia, making it easier for them to control inflation by administrative means. "People haven't been paid for a long time," said Greta Bull, an American economic researcher here. "Or they're paying people pots and pans or in kind."Only about 10 percent of the state economy has been privatized to date, according to Lidiya Verkhovodova, who heads privatization studies at the center. In most of these cases privatization has meant a formal transfer of ownership to the workers, resulting in little real change, economists say.Many of the state enterprises are losing money, and even when they stay in the black they value production and stability over change and profit."It is our duty as the leadership to preserve all personnel in the workplace," said Mark Povolotsky, director of planning at the Dzerzhinsky Metallurgy Factory in Dniprodzerzhinsk. "Thus, not a single of our 20,000 workers has lost his job."Such refusal to tolerate unemployment means the government is very likely to pump out industrial and agricultural credits anew in the near future, which in turn will boost inflation and cause the value of the coupon to fall. "If this parliament continues to request vast crediting of the national economy, as it did in 1993, the current trends may be reversed, and inflation and currency stability will be shaken," a recent report by the Economy Ministry predicts. Even if inflation worsens, it will be difficult to judge its true impact, as a booming black-market sector of unregulated private enterprise makes economic statistics very imprecise. Sales of everything from imported Italian ice cream to second-hand clothes have expanded dramatically across Ukraine in the last year as they did in Russia several years before.On the negative side, crime and graft are endemic across the country, sapping the economy. Experts also estimate that, as in Russia, wealthy Ukrainians have sent billions of dollars out of the country for safe keeping, usually illegally.Even as inflation has fallen and the coupon stabilized somewhat, real wages remain remarkably low, roughly $15 to $20 a month according to official statistics. Yet abject poverty is rarely seen, suggesting that real living standards are somewhat better.During the summer "most Ukrainians will be spending much of their time in the country on vacation or working small plots of land allotted to over 60 percent of the population," a report issued last week by the Democratic Elections Observation and Coordination Center concludes. These crops "form an integral part of a household's income."Such plots mean that in the Lviv region of Western Ukraine, for example, the private sector harvests 96 percent of all potatoes and 60 percent of all chicken and meat, said Nikolai Gorin, chairman of the region's council.This private bounty is not included in official statistics, however.Irina Novetskaya, an economist who has contributed to World Bank studies, says that real income would be two or three times as high as official statistics if Ukraine's growing unofficial sector were included in the numbers."I don't doubt that the true income level is at least $50 with the unofficial economy included," said Novetskaya. "Its role has become so significant that it is stabilizing the whole situation."