Brussels, 12/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) welcomes the determination of the Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, to continue on the path of sustainable growth and reassured him of the IMF's support for the government's efforts to implement this very ambitious structural adjustment programme, said Gerry Rice, an IMF spokesman, at a press conference on Thursday 11 July.
The IMF head, Christine Lagarde, has sent Anastasiades a letter in response to his letter to the troika in June, urging them to find a solution to the cash flow problems facing the country's biggest bank, Bank of Cyprus (BoC). Rice said that the IMF and its troika partners (European Commission and European Central Bank) would travel to Cyprus on 17 July for a two-week fact-finding mission. The troika is expected to examine the assessment of assets carried out by KPMG, the results of which are to be available around 20 July.
The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, also responded to Anastasiades' letter and brought the matter up at the recent EU summit, where the EU heads of state instructed the EP and Council of Ministers to examine potential flexibility in the EU's multiannual financial framework to deal with the island's particularly difficult situation using the annual budget procedure. The head of the ECB, Mario Draghi, has met with a Cypriot delegation and talks are due to continue.
Russia announced on Thursday that is has reached a preliminary agreement on restructuring a loan of €2.5 billion to Cyprus granted in 2011. Russia's ambassador to Nicosia, Vyacheslav Shumskiy, said on the Sigma television station that the deal was almost ready to be signed. He criticised the way that decisions about the Cypriot bailout plan were made in the course of one night and without consulting Russia, and said that Anastasiades had unsuccessfully tried to contact the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on 15 March, the night when the Eurogroup decided to raid savings in Cypriot banks. (EL/transl.fl)