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Mihai Tanasescu about Romania's Accord with IMF

There are enough big chances that Romania's Accord with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stay in force, even if there are some delays on Romania's behalf, in the enactment of the agenda IMF established, Romania's representative to IMF Mihai Tansescu told the Gandul daily.

A likely not-exact observance of the agenda with IMF is no unconceivable situation. The Accord has been and will be in force. If there were negative reactions, the IMF delegation would not have come to Bucharest. There is an Accord, and it is with Romania, the IMF official said.

It is the coming of 1.5 billion euros representing the third tier of the Accord worth 13 billion euros, in all, that depends on the outcome of this mission, and 750 million euros of it will go to the reserve of Romania's National Bank (BNR) to back up the Romanian currency and to restart the crediting, while the Finance Ministry is to use the other half to cover the budget deficit, to pay the state's obligations, particularly the salaries and the pensions, respectively.

As for the purpose of the official visit the IMF delegation is paying to Bucharest, these days, Tanasescu says it is both to checking out how the Accord is economically observed, and the economic indices respectively, as well as to reconfirm the decisional factors regarding the fulfillment of this financial arrangement.

'Talks will be held both with the officials of the Finance Ministry and the BNR, and with the political parties. It will be practically, checked out the determination of these factors to fulfill the commitments made and it will be exactly verified how much we want to meet this Accord,' Tanasescu explained.

The main reason for the requirement of the renegotiation the Accord, a measure first announced by President Traian Basescu, early this week, might be the fact that Romania failed to adopt in due time the law packages asked by IMF, and the possible failure of enacting the step of cutting the budget expenditure through sending the Romanian public employees on a 10-day unpaid holiday.

'The law on the ten-day unpaid holiday is currently at the Constitutional Court (CC). Thus, there are two variants, either it will be declared constitutional, and will be enacted or it will be ruled unconstitutional. In the latter case, it is most likely that other methods will be sought for, to reach the same result. The most important problem by the end of the year is the approval of the budge for 2010. We should also remember that the law on the fiscal responsibility and that on pensions are to come in force in 2010. They are possible problems that can be solved, even if some delays may exist,' Romania's IMF official said. In case the CC declares the 10-day unpaid holiday as unconstitutional. To observe the budget deficit target, the Finance Ministry will have to curb the costs. Economists say that most probably the victim will be the investments budget, the Gandul daily writes.

In the framework of the previous IMF mission to Romania, early in Aug, the IMF officials agreed on the renegotiation of the accord signed only a couple of months before and allowed Romania a budget deficit of 7.3 percent of its GDP, compared to 4.6 percent as it had been agreed upon in spring. The requirement of the renegotiation was then motivated both by IMF and the Romanian officials through changing the assessment of the local economic development, and revenues from -4 to -8, even to - 8.5 percent of the GDP, by 17 billion lei lower that it was initially assessed, respectively.

Sursa: http://www.agerpres.ro

Tags: budget there accord tanasescu romanias bnr