VIENNA: Serbia will reach a deal on cooperation with the International Monetary Fund after its current three-year loan programme ends in February, but the new arrangement will not involve another loan, Finance Minister Dusan Vujovic said.
The most likely form of cooperation is an IMF tool known as the Policy Coordination Instrument (PCI), he said, adding that Serbia had not tapped the 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) available under the current precautionary loan programme.
"There will be some form of cooperation with the IMF and most likely in the form of a PCI," Vujovic told reporters on the sidelines of a Euromoney conference in Vienna on Tuesday.
"Since this is not related to money, I would say in my personal view (that) the programme ought to be agreed before the summer in order for us together with them to basically agree on the key elements that we will be including in the budget for next year," he said.
The focus of any future Serbian cooperation with the IMF would be structural reforms and sources of economic growth in the medium term, according to Vujovic.
"So we already have a pretty good idea of what the programme would entail. What would be the format of this programme - just staff consultations or a PCI programme, which is a new instrument that precisely allows this - remains to be seen."
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