ANKARA - International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation headed by Turkey Desk Chief Reza Moghadam arrived in Turkey on Wednesday for discussions on the eighth review of the stand-by deal.
IMF delegation will meet with business and finance circles and representatives of several civil organizations in Istanbul on Thursday.
Following those meetings, IMF delegation will proceed to Ankara on June 8 to hold formal meetings at the Treasury Undersecretary's Office, Finance Ministry, Banking Regulatory and Supervisory Agency (BRSA), Central Bank and State Planning Organization (DPT) and relevant ministers.
Meanwhile, IMF European One Director and IMF Executive Director Michael Deppler and Willy Kiekens will also come to Turkey.
Deppler and Kiekens are expected to join discussions of Turkish economy officials and IMF delegation between June 7-10.
During these meetings, the sides will also discuss format of new agreement that will be replaced with existing stand-by deal that will end in February 2004. Also maturity of new agreement is expected to be discussed during these meetings.
The sides decided to decrease the number of reviews to three. Earlier, four reviews were envisaged to be held.
New agreement with the IMF that is expected to come onto the agenda will be selected among three options such as ''post-program monitoring, precautionary stand-by or normal stand-by deal''.
Under new agreement, nearly 660 million U.S. dollars of loan tranches will be approved instead of 500 million U.S. dollars of loan tranches.
(MS) 02.06.2004