Romanian central bank governor: An IMF agreement is impossible this year

It’s impossible for Romania to conclude a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this year, said Romania’s National Bank governor Mugur Isarescu. The first reason is that Romania has an extremely low current account deficit, namely less than 1%. By comparison, other countries such as Brazil have a deficit of 14%, like Romania had in 2008, said Isarescu. The second reason is related to the last agreement with the IMF, which ended in September 2015. “I don’t think the IMF will forget what happened in 2015,” the governor said, reports local Agerpres. The agreement finished without an IMF report, as it went off track in mid-2014 when the Government and the IMF representatives couldn’t reach an agreement on fiscal relaxation measures. Mugur Isarescu also expects this year to be “tumultuous” in the international markets, but says that most of the “waves” are far from Romania. He believes that the local financial markets have shown a good capacity to adjust the imbalances that sometimes occur. editor@romania-insider.com