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Russia seeks $4 billion from Wold Bank

05 October 2009 09:24 (UTC +04:00)

BakÄ± â€“ APA-Economics. Russia is considering borrowing up to four billion dollars (2.74 billion euros) from the World Bank next year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was reported on Sunday as saying.
Kudrin said he discussed the idea with World Bank chief Robert Zoellick on the sidelines of a joint World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in Istanbul at the weekend.
"We discussed the possibility of receiving a credit of 2.0-4.0 billion dollars. Of course, we are interested in a simplified, fast-track credit," Russian news agencies quoted Kudrin as saying.
"It all depends on the conditions and we agreed to negotiate about the conditions."
Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin added that Moscow would not accept any credit which came with conditions about the running of Russian economic policy.
The global financial crisis has blown a major hole in the Russian budget, with the deficit predicted to be around 8.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009.
The possible World Bank loan is the latest mechanism to be considered by the government to obtain extra cash.
It has already announced plans to issue 17.8 billion dollars of eurobonds in 2010 and relaunch a long-mothballed privatisation drive.
Russia has proudly boasted that it has not needed to ask for credit from the IMF to help it through the economic crisis, in stark contrast to other ex-Soviet states such as Ukraine.
Yevgeny Yasin, research director at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said taking a loan from the World Bank was "good, something that should have been done a long time ago".
"If Russia takes this money from the World Bank, then this money will be spent on something which will be good for the whole country," he told Moscow Echo radio. Source: AFP