The Government has one week left to meet the conditions that should persuade the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Board to consider the stand-by agreement completed.
Finance minister Mihai Tanasescu on Sunday told Ziarul Financiar that the latest signals from the financial institution “were positive.”
At the end of July, Romanian authorities and the IMF officials negotiated a supplementary memorandum of economic policies, with new pledges made in exchange for the delays posted in the previous programme. Should these pledges be met, this would be the first IMF agreement completed after 1989. The big companies are posing the most delicate problem, as they must be either privatised or liquidated. Tanasescu and the head of the IMF’s Europe I Department Michael Deppler have tackled the problems linked to finalising the agreement. According to the Finance minister, the privatisation of Aro Campulung and Roman Brasov will be completed next week.
The Finance minister is in Dubai, attending the annual meeting of the World Bank and the IMF. Tanasescu met with officials of the two institutions and with representatives of investment banks and rating agencies.
The memorandum is scheduled to be debated by the International Monetary Fund’s Board on October 8. Should the memorandum be endorsed, Romania would also get the two final tranches of the loan, worth some $153 million.
The agreement was concluded in October 2001 and is worth 300 Special Drawing Rights (some $418 million).
The Romanian officials are slated to start talks with IMF representatives on the next collaboration with the international financial institution. The two parties may conclude a precautionary arrangement, outlining the guidelines of the Government’s macroeconomic policy.
Tanasescu also met with the World Bank’s VP for Europe and discussed the PSAL II programme, scheduled to end next year, and the bank’s project portfolio for Romania. razvan.voican@zf.ro