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Tweaked terms for seventh tranche of EFSD loan for Belarus authorized
MINSK, 16 January (BelTA) – The Council of the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development (EFSD) has authorized amendments to Belarus’ reform program, which is backed by an EFSD financial loan. In particular, conditions for providing the seventh tranche of the loan have been amended, BelTA has learned.
The terms of the final tranche of the loan had to be adjusted due to shifts in the schedule for implementing the measures the program stipulates within the framework of the first six tranches. The Council of the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development authorized the rescheduling of the date for verifying conditions for the seventh tranche are met from 1 January 2018 to 1 December 2018 and the rescheduling of the loan availability final date from 31 December 2018 to 31 March 2019 upon requests of the Belarusian Finance Ministry.
The amendments updated threshold parameters of quantity indicators and corrected the wording of some conditions. The minimal level of gross international reserves was set taking into account the dynamics of the indicator in H1 2018, expected foreign exchange flows and in order to prevent the gross international reserves from dropping below two months’ worth of import. Threshold values on monetary indicators were set to levels conducive to slowing down inflation in 2018 and keeping it within the 6% target range. The condition, which requires the Belarusian government to adopt a resolution to encourage the evaluation of the regulatory impact of draft legislation concerning business operation terms, was not fulfilled within the framework of the sixth tranche and was re-added to conditions for providing the seventh tranche as a control indicator.
A number of measures, which are no longer relevant, have been removed from conditions for providing the seventh tranche.
The condition, which requires the adoption of a Belarus president decree to legislate how steadily insolvent municipal agricultural enterprises can go into administration, has been removed because the relevant procedure had been implemented earlier by separate decisions of the Belarusian head of state.
BelTA reported earlier that the Eurasian Development Bank, which manages assets of the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development, transferred the sixth tranche of the loan to the tune of $200 million to Belarus in October 2018. Taking into account previous tranches Belarus received $1.8 billion out of the total loan sum of $2 billion. The money is supposed to support domestic reforms in Belarus.
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