The scope of the IMF agreement is economically insignificant and its effects are more important politically. Technically, Moldova will receive a credit of $179 million, but this is a meagre sum given our current expense sheet and currency reserves. This opinion was shared by economic expert Roman Chirca during a public debate on the topic “The economical and political importance of Moldova’s Agreement with the IMF and the political ability to implement it”, the 58th in the series “Developing political culture through public debates”, organized by IPN in partnership with Radio Moldova.
According to the expert, Moldova is not among those countries that need IMF funds to stabilize their expense sheet and maintain their currency reserves. He notes that recent events in the Parliament, the changing of four Cabinets in a single year have made our development partners a little reluctant and even our closest friend Romania, invoked the IMF when negotiating a technical credit. The IMF is famous for its tough negotiations with national governments.
The expert says that even after the agreement is signed and further financing is unblocked, the question remains what will Moldova do next, whether it will implement fundamental reforms in various sectors.
In his opinion, Moldova must accept all the conditions imposed by the IMF for the signing of the Memorandum. “But we have a little problem here. These things need to be implemented and during their implementation, there will be intermediary evaluation periods. If the evaluations are negative the because some reforms are not implemented, this might be very bad news for us”, warned the expert.
According to Roman Chirca, judging by the latest developments, the IMF Memorandum will be signed in October. “I’m not a fan of development in the IMF program format. I think that the government is making a mistake by not launching some reforms in parallel with the negotiations. By doing it, we could save a lot of time, effort and reduce the numbers of issues to be negotiated. Moreover, we can gain our development partners’ appreciation”, said Chirca.
The importance of the IMF agreement, in his view, resides in the consequences that follow it and Moldova should overcome this situation of external pressure. “I think that our only chance to develop is to create authentic state institutions, to weed out corruption, to reform the judiciary, to create the foundations for stimulating and boosting investments, but this cannot be achieved only as a consequence of pressure from foreign partners. I don’t think they always offer the best advice and recommendations and often these are influenced by the international context”, opined Chirca.
The public debate about “The economical and political importance of Moldova’s Agreement with the IMF and the political ability to implement it” was the 58th in the IPN series “Developing political culture through public debates”, organized with the support of German Foundation Hanns Seidel.
