Romania President: IMF Finishes Report On Possible Loan

BUCHAREST -The International Monetary Fund finalized a report on a possible loan to help Romania weather the economic crisis and talks are planned to seek a deal, the country’s president said Friday.

“The IMF report was finalized yesterday,” President Traian Basescu said after a European Union summit in Brussels, according to a statement released here by the presidency.

“Based on this document the government will now discuss a mandate, which I will have to approve, for the Romanian central bank and the finance ministry to begin negotiations” with the IMF and the European Union on a possible loan, he said.

“We will see what the results of the negotiations are and how we can reconcile our interests with those of the IMF and the E.U.,” Basescu added.

Among Romania’s aims are “modernizing the tax system and a program…to adopt the euro in 2014.”

Basescu said on Tuesday that Romania was seeking a loan of up to EUR20 billion, negotiated with the E.U., IMF, World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and European Investment Bank.

He said an assessment by the IMF experts showed that the economic situation was “worse than expected.”

“No one sees an end to the crisis at the end of 2009,” he said. “This is why we need a safety belt for two years.”

If the negotiations with the IMF succeed, Romania would become the fifth country in central and eastern Europe to turn to such rescue measures, after Hungary, Latvia, Serbia and Ukraine.