IMF OFFICE IN BOSNIA WILL NOT CLOSE

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (June 13,2008) - The office of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo will not be closed, but reorganized, the organization’s resident representative Graham Slack said yesterday, after the Governer of the Bosnian Central Bank Kemal Kozaric said in an interview two days ago that the IMF office in Bosnia would shut down.

The IMF office will remain open with the Bosnian Central Bank, but there will be no resident representative of the IMF in Bosnia, Slack explained, adding that there would two or three IMF employees to monitor the economic situation in Bosnia.

Despite repeated IMF warnings, the Bosnian state and entity governments have failed to curb their excessive public spending, which was the main reason why the country was not able to negotiate a new Stand-By arrangement with the IMF for the past four years.

In Wednesday’s interview Governer Kozaric stressed that the IMF, as well as the Bosnian experts, remain concerned over continued excessive public spending as well as by growing inflation caused by galloping global prices of food and fuel.
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