New ADVISORY arrangement between Serbia and IMF agreed on

The representatives of Serbia and the mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed today on a new advisory arrangement of Serbia with that financial institution, the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) announced.

An agreement on the arrangement, called the Policy Coordination Instrument, should be approved by the IMF’s Board of Governors and Executive Board, which is expected in the second half of June.

Serbia’s new arrangement with the IMF will not imply financial support, instead it will be exclusively of an advisory nature, and it will last for two and a half years, i.e. until the end of 2023.

„After the talks and detailed analyses, the IMF mission has assessed that Serbia is coping well with the pandemic and that in 2020 we had one of the best outcomes in Europe in terms of economic growth, owing to, among other things, the strong response of economic policy makers.“ The IMF estimates that the decisive responses of the Government and the NBS helped to limit the effects of the pandemic on the Serbian economy,“ the NBS said in a statement after the final talks with the IMF mission.

As NBS Governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic pointed out, the IMF’s assessment is that Serbia has achieved its goals with a quick and extensive reaction, coordination and proactive approach – preservation of production, employment, liquidity, favorable financing conditions and necessary consumer and investment confidence.

„We have preserved stability and prevented a spiral of negative events caused by psychological and panic reactions of market participants,“ said Tabakovic.

The IMF said that Serbia’s recovery continued in the right direction, but also that the economic outlook was still strongly influenced by uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic and the pace of vaccination in the countries that were Serbia’s key foreign trade partners.

Izvor: Beta

Foto: Beta