Limba romana                                                                         Russian

Johan Mathisen
Resident Representative in the Republic of Moldova

November 29, 2005

PRESS STATEMENT

A mission from the IMF’s European Department, headed by Mr. Thomas Richardson, will work in Chisinau from Thursday, December 1, to Friday, December 16, 2005.

The mission will have two main tasks.

First and most important, it will conduct discussions for the 2005 Article IV consultation. Reviews of this sort are a core activity of the IMF, and are conduced for every IMF member country about once per year. The documents for the previous consultation, as well as the conclusions of the IMF Executive Board, are available on the IMF’s web site (www.imf.org).

Second, this mission will initiate discussions on a new, three-year IMF lending arrangement for Moldova under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). A PRGF loan from the IMF would be on concessional terms (at an interest rate of 0.5 percent, and with a maturity of 10 years, after 5½ years of grace), and would be provided to the National Bank of Moldova to bolster Moldova’s foreign reserves, thus providing a cushion against external shocks.

Although this mission will initiate discussions on a new IMF-supported program, it will not complete them. The tasks of the Article IV consultation (which is an obligation of every IMF member country) will require up much of the mission’s time, making it impossible to conclude PRGF discussions during this visit. A second mission is already in preparation, tentatively scheduled for early February.

Finally, as usual, Mr. Richardson and his team will hold a short press briefing at the end of this visit.