Details of talks on the next tranche of Hungary’s SDR 10.5bn standby credit from the IMF with a delegation from the fund will be revealed at a press conference in the afternoon on Wednesday, the Finance Ministry told MTI.
Finance Minister Peter Oszko and National Bank of Hungary governor Andras Simor will speak at the press conference, together with representatives of delegations from the IMF and the EU.
Mr Simor said in a television interview on Sunday that the “talks were successfully closed” without revealing any further details.
Both Mr Simor and Mr Oszko said earlier that Hungary aimed to extend the deadline for drawing on the IMF loan.
NBH deputy-governor Ferenc Karvalits said earlier that Hungary wanted to extend the availability of the remaining two tranches of the IMF standby credit by six to nine months from the original March 2010 deadline.
The IMF approved the SDR 10.5bn (EUR 12.4bn at the time) standby loan for Hungary in November after the country’s bond market locked up. The loan was part of a EUR 20bn financial support package that also involved the EU and the World Bank. Hungary has drawn around EUR 8.6bn of the IMF loan in three tranches. The loan is to be drawn in five tranches by March 2010. The fourth tranche, worth around EUR 1.5bn, has to be drawn by the middle of November.