Turkey, IMF agree at G-20 to restart talks on new loan agreement

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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The decision was made at a meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in London.   

Turkey's Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek, State Minister and Deputy Premier Nazim Ekren, and IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky also attended the meeting.

Erdogan said later on Thursday that his meeting with the IMF officials was very positive and that they would invite the IMF delegation to Turkey.

"We will invite them (the IMF delegation) to Turkey this month. We recorded great progress. Talks will be held," he was quoted by the Anatolian Agency as saying at a conference about Turkey’s role in the U.N.’s Alliance of Civilizations at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in Britain.

Turkey and the IMF began talks in January for a fresh loan deal after Ankara successfully completed a three-year, $10 billion stand-by deal in May.

Turkey announced at the end of January that it had reached an outline agreement with the IMF on a new loan plan but said differences remained and that the sides would take a break in negotiations to complete technical works.

Turkey’s main economic indicators have recently started to sound alarm bells – the economy contracted 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008, unemployment shot up to a record 13.6 percent in December and industrial output slumped 21.3 percent in January.

Photo is an archive image.