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No need for Slovenia to ask for foreign aid: FinMin

25 July 2012 00:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Slovenian Finance Minister Janez Sustersic reiterated here on Tuesday that Slovenia is not in need of financial aid from the European Union despite its current financial difficulties, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Slovenian banks needed to solve the problems of bad loans, Sustersic said. But he insisted that the country was implementing national budget as planned and there were no liquidity problems.

He also rejected reports that Slovenia would need to borrow some 1.3 billion euros (about 1.57 billion U.S. dollars) in November, adding that the figure was "either a mistake or a misinterpretation."

However, the minister said that Slovenia’s planned budget deficit in 2012 would account for three percent of the country’s annual economic output, and was indeed in need of at least some 500 million euros by the end of the year.

A recent due diligence at Slovenia’s largest bank, NLB, has revealed 1.5 billion euros in loans of the lowest quality, meaning the state-owned bank would need up to 500 million euros in new capital by the end of 2013, Sustersic said on July 12.

Commenting media reports and speculation that Slovenia would be the next to ask for international aid, Sustersic said in Brussels in early July that Slovenia had not plan to request for financial aid.

The Slovenian Finance Ministry also rejected suggestions that Slovenia might become the next eurozone country to ask for a bailout.

"There is no need to ask for aid from European financial mechanisms, either due to bank capital adequacy or due to fiscal reasons," the ministry said in a statement.