The Government has signed the official letter of intent negotiated and accepted by the International Monetary Fund on the loan for Romania.
The document was sent to Washington yesterday. After the final notification of the IMF and EC, set for early May, the letter will be resent to the Romanian authorities and submitted to the Parliament for adoption.The novelty lies in the fact that they changed the quarterly deficit targets, announced the Finance Minister, Gheorghe Pogea. Initially, the IMF established performance criteria for a deficit of 12.13 billion lei at the half of the year, of 17.63 billion lei at the end of the first nine months and 24.3 billion lei at the end of the year. Given that the first quarter has already registered a deficit of 8.29 billion lei, the new deficit targets negotiated with the IMF for the second quarter is 14.5 billion lei, for the third, 18.6 billion lei, and kept its end limit of 24.3 billion lei.
The loan also comprises four major conditions. The first lies in the realization of a correction of the budget by 1.1% of GDP. The other three refer to the law for the unique salary scheme law, to the law regarding the fiscal responsibility and to the law on pension reform.
Prime Minister Boc also spoke about the "unique law under which to pay pensions in Romania".