A letter of intent from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a new loan arrangement has been received by Bosnian authorities, Chairman of Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zoran Tegeltija stated at a news conference on Wednesday.
According to him, the letter needs to be approved by the Fiscal Council of BiH and then sent to Washington for approval. “That should be completed next week, in which case we can expect the funds to be operational as early as May,” Tegeltija said, according to Avaz news portal.
Tegeltija confirmed that it was an arrangement worth 160 million euros, or 320 million BAM. According to unofficial information, it is a standby arrangement whereby the IMF issues emergency loans to the Member States under very favorable conditions in order to overcome short-term cyclical balance of payments problems.
Standby arrangements are generally signed for a period of 1 to 2 years, with repayment periods ranging from 2 to 5 years. The loan is approved at an annual interest rate of 0.7 percent.
Otherwise, the public debt of Bosnia and Herzegovina is currently around 11 billion BAM, of which the external debt is 8.2 billion BAM, while the domestic debt is around 2.9 billion BAM.
