ANKARA: Iraq has requested financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and agreement may be reached within weeks on a loan of about $800 million, a senior IMF official said.
Iraqi finances have been hit hard by the plunge of oil prices since last year as well as by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) insurgency. The government has projected a budget deficit of about $25 billion this year, in a budget of some $100 billion.
Aid from the IMF could ease the pressure and by increasing investor confidence, help Iraq raise money from other sources. Baghdad has said it plans to issue $5 billion of debt in its first international bond sale for nine years.
Teams will work on the issue in coming weeks. We hope we can reach a conclusion relatively soon,” Masood Ahmed, Director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, said in an interview.
Ahmed said the aid would probably come in the form of a Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) and would be “relatively small, about $800 million or so”.
