New IMF mission to come to Moldova in next September

Chisinau, 7 August /MOLDPRES/ - A mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will come to Moldova in September, says a letter by IMF's European Fund to the Moldovan government, as reply to the latter's invitation to urgently send a mission, in order to assess prospects to resume cooperation with the Fund.

IMF welcomed the Moldovan authorities' intention to promote reforms and start talks on a new programme with the Fund.

The date of the visit by IMF experts has not been set as yet. On the other hand, the same sources said that the mission would come to Chisinau most likely on 22 September and will last for two weeks, just as the previous ones. The IMF's team will have meetings at the government, National Bank of Moldova, Economics Ministry, Finance Ministry, State Fiscal Service and other institutions.

The Moldovan authorities hope that the signing of an agreement with IMF will allow unblocking the budgetary support, first of all, on behalf of the World Bank and European Union, in amount of 45 million dollars and, respectively, 40.7 million euros. „We want, as soon as possible, to get to the signing of an agreement-memorandum, due to allow us normalising the ties with all other development partners,” Strelet said at the first cabinet meeting.

The conclusion of a cooperation programme with IMF „is of major importance, in order to ensure the budget's sustainability both on short- and medium-term,” the Finance Ministry says. The lack of a programme might jeopardise the foreign budgetary support, the amount of which is of 2,238,000,100 lei in the draft state budget.

The authorities have already started implementing one of the IMF's preconditions, namely the liquidation of the three problem banks under special administration. IMF has earlier said that the three banks, namely Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank, must be liquidated and the transparency of the banks' shareholders and real beneficiaries should be ensured.

Moldova has no programme with IMF since March 2013.

(Reporter V. Bercu, Editor L. Alcaza)