February 10 (SeeNews) - Romania's finance ministry said on Friday it has decided to extend the second tranche of a 150 million euro ($159.6 million) loan to Moldova a month earlier than initially agreed, at Chisinau's request.
In January, Moldova asked Romania to change the date of the release of the second tranche of 50 million euro to February 27, from March 31, Romania's finance ministry said in a press release.
On August 24, Romania extended the first tranche of 60 million euro, which Moldova used to finance spending programmes under its 2016 budget.
The release of the first tranche of the Romanian loan was conditional on Moldova's commitment to reform its banking sector and legislative system and to speed up its anti-corruption efforts. The disbursement of the second tranche is conditional on the closing of a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF signed a $178.7 million three-year funding arrangement with Moldova in November. However, at the beginning of this year the IMF said that it might reconsider the deal if the country failed to repay debt related to a large-scale banking fraud as agreed earlier. An IMF mission will visit Moldova in the second half of the month to assess the government's reform progress.
Moldova has been trying to cope with a major banking crisis since about $1 billion went missing from three local banks in November 2014. The banks - Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank were liquidated.
The tiny landlocked ex-Soviet state of Moldova has a population of some 3 million and has strong historical and political ties with its western neighbour Romania, with more than 75% of the population speaking Romanian.
($=0.9351 euro)