SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), February 8 (SeeNews) – The International Monetary Fund will approve the next tranche to Bosnia and Herzegovina, under its three-year loan deal with the country, this month, the chairman of Bosnia's state-level Council of Ministers, Denis Zvizdic, said.
Last month, Bosnia sent a supplementary letter of intent to the IMF, in which it defined the deadlines for certain obligations it must meet under its agreement with the fund, Zvizdic said in an audio recording of a press conference given in Sarajevo, posted on the website of the Council of Ministers on Wednesday.
"The letter of intent remains completely identical, except that we have changed certain deadlines in accordance with our obligations, and converted a part of the previous measures into structural measures," Zvizdic said.
Bosnia submitted the original letter of intent in 2016, but later failed to meet some of the economic reform targets outlined in the letter, which forced the IMF to halt the release of the second tranche of funds in May 2017.
In December, the IMF announced it had reached a staff-level agreement with Bosnia to conclude the first review under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) with Bosnia. Last month, it confirmed for SeeNews that its Executive Board plans to consider the first review of the EFF on February 9.
In September 2016, the IMF approved a three-year 553.3 million euro ($676.8 million) loan to Bosnia to support the country's economic reform agenda. The fund released the first tranche of the loan in the amount of 79.2 million euro in 2016, while the remainder was said to be made available in 11 instalments subject to quarterly reviews.
($=0.81761 euro)