Franks: Next loan tranche released as soon as political gridlock solved

The next loan tranche will be released as soon as Romania overcomes the current political gridlock, chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission to Bucharest Jeffrey Franks said on Friday. 

'We made progress in the past ten days of talks with Romanian authorities. We are in the position to complete the analysis, so that we should be able to release the next loan tranche as soon as the political gridlock comes to end. Although we did not manage to fully complete the assessment task, in the following days we will continue to work and keep connected by either email or phone, so that we can carry on. We are ready to send one or several missions to complete and finalize these talks as soon as the situation allows it,' explained Franks.
European Commission director Elena Flores also stressed that important progress was made in the past 10 days, in three directions, namely the financial situation and policies and a better recovery of the balance of payments.

'Some of the measures reached by the government in recent days give us hope that as soon as political uncertainty is put an end to and an official budget is in place for 2010, we will be able to complete and disburse the next tranche,' said Flores.

She reminded that the EC released on November 3 its autumn forecast that also covers Romania, and that despite the deepening of the deficit, the situation did not worsen in the second half of the year.

An IMF assessment mission is visiting Romania between October 28 and Nov. 9 to assess the fulfillment of the conditionalities in the Stand-by Agreement.

Agerpres