March 16 (SeeNews) - Serbia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) jointly defined instruments for the future monitoring of the country's energy sector by the global lender at a meeting on Thursday, the Serbian government said.
As a result of the recently completed three-year stand-by arrangement (SBA) with the IMF, all companies in the energy sector are now profitable, energy minister Aleksandar Antic said during a meeting with the IMF mission led by James Roaf, according to a government press release issued on Thursday.
The energy sector is financially consolidated and this should be an incentive for the government to continue the introduction of order into other state-owned companies, Antic added.
The IMF mission will stay in Serbia until March 16 to analyse the results of the SBA and the institutional and structural reforms to be implemented by the Serbian government.
In February, the IMF said that Serbia exited a successful $1.32 billion (1.07 billion euro) three-year programme. After three years of effort under the programme, Serbia's economy has turned around, as fiscal accounts recorded a surplus in 2017, economic confidence improved with stronger investment both from foreign and domestic sources, while unemployment is near historic lows, and falling, banks are solid, and non-performing loans are now below their pre-crisis levels, the IMF said.
($ = 0.811473 euro)