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EU and IMF to grant â‚¬ 5 bln to Romania

07 February 2011 11:32 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. The International Monetary Fund and the EU have reached an agreement to grant Romania a fresh credit line of five billion euros ($6.8 billion dollars), president Traian Basescu said Sunday, MSN reported.

"Under this deal, the IMF and the EU will place at Romania’s disposal five billion euros" to be drawn only in case of emergency, Basescu said in a public address.

He stressed that the current agreement, concluded in 2009, had been a "success", as it helped the Balkan country stabilize its economy.

"We have taken the requisite measures to exit from the crisis ... and created conditions for a return to growth," he said.

After severe recession in 2009 and 2010, the Romanian economy is expected to grow by 1.5 percent in 2011.

The public deficit, which stood at 7.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, was trimmed to 6.6 percent last year, and is expected to be cut to 4.6 percent in 2011.

Basescu added that Romania no longer needed to draw the last instalment, worth one billion euros, from the IMF, as the central bank’s currency reserves were sufficient.

In May 2009, crisis-hit Romania had obtained a two-year 20-billion-euro lifeline from the IMF, the EU and the World Bank in exchange for key reforms aimed at slashing public spending