The International Monetary Fund says it will wait for Romanian authorities to decide whether they want to make the needed changes to achieve the 2014 target budget deficit, after the Romanian president refused to sign the memorandum of understanding IMF.

The international financier also reminded that Romania was the one which asked for this new precautionary loan.

During a recent mission, a team of IMF experts agreed with Romanian authorities over the needed policies to conclude the first evaluation of Romania's stand – by agreement with the fund, including the needed policies to keep the budget deficit at 2.2 percent of the GDP, said Guillermo Tolosa in a recent statement sent by the IMF office in Romania.

“We are aware of the disagreement between president Traian Basescu and the Government on the concrete measures that will be used to reach this target. The IMF staff currently monitors the evolutions and awaits a decision from the authorities, if they want to modify the needed policies to make sure they reach the agreed deficit target,”the IMF statement went on.

The IMF board was to discuss and approve the first evaluation of Romania's new loan on December 18, but this will most likely be pushed back to March 2014, according to unnamed sources quoted by Romanian media. An IMF mission will be in Bucharest in January.

More about the recent refusal to sign the memorandum with IMF, here.

editor@romania-insider.com