Moldovan premier meets IMF experts mission on evaluation visit to Moldova

Chisinau, 15 March /MOLDPRES/ - Prime Minister Pavel Filip today had a meeting with an experts team of the International Monetary Fund, led by Ben Kelmanson, on a 15-27 March working visit to Moldova, the government’s communication and protocol department has reported.   

The PM said that, since the last IMF’s evaluation mission, which took place five months ago, positive developments had been recorded on more dimensions. A proof in this respect represent the macroeconomic indexes: in the first nine months of 2017, the economic growth stood at 3.8 per cent, exports grew by 18.6 per cent, including by 20.5 per cent to the European Union. Also, a new shareholder was registered at Victoriabank and a potential investor at Moldova-Agroindbank. The investor has been identified for the construction of the Ungheni-Chisinau gas pipeline, which contributes to the enhancement of Moldova’s energy security.    

“All these things would not have been possible, if Moldova did not have a programme with IMF. The existence of conditions helped us move forward with the reforms’ implementation,” Pavel Filip said. The prime minister noted that, till the end of the current parliamentary session, the state budget law for the next year is to be approved as well.

The head of the IMF experts team, Ben Kelmanson, welcomed the developments registered by the cabinet on the last period and encouraged the authorities to maintain the speed of yielding results. The IMF official referred to the main fields due to be assessed during this mission. Among them, there are fiscal aspects, the medium-term budgetary framework, the budget for 2018 and macroeconomic forecasts. Also, the Fund’s experts will make an evaluation of the developments in the financial, banking and energy sectors.   

Prime Minister Pavel Filip thanked for the support provided by IMF to carry out the economic and financial reforms. He confirmed determination to carry through the implementation of the reforms’ agenda, despite the fact that Moldova is in an electoral year.  

Moldova’s three-year programme, backed by IMF, was approved on 7 November 2016. The programme is financed through a loan worth about 187 million dollars in all, of which 83 million dollars has been already earmarked.