The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced Monday that the executive board meeting to discuss the eighth review of the fund's program with Turkey was being postponed pending fulfillment of a few prior actions, as Turkey was seen to be backsliding on its commitments in the multibillion dollar deal, reported the Turkish Daily News.
"Against a background of generally good implementation of the economic program of the Turkish government, including the passage of a remarkable number of key legislative measures, a few prior actions that were to have been implemented by the time of the board review have not yet been carried out. These include several actions relating to the banking system, which we hope could be put in place soon," IMF managing director Horst Koehler said in a brief statement.
The IMF board meeting was scheduled for July 3, and no new date was specified in the statement.
"In addition, we need to verify that the newly appointed board of Turk Telekom meets the requirements set out in the authorities' May 3 Memorandum on Economic Policies," Koehler added in the statement, cited by the paper.
The IMF announcement came minutes before Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer ratified a law providing for the liquidation of Emlakbank, one of the conditions for the $1.56 billion tranche.
Appointments to Turk Telekom board have been the subject of intra-coalition wrangling for weeks, and consequently Economy Minister Kemal Dervis had to back off from his own candidates in favor of those of the Nationalist Movement Party, which controls the telecom monopoly.
Analysts were worried that the IMF could indeed delay the loan, because the board included political figures with no private sector experience. Furthermore, the existing general manager of the company, who was widely shown by the media as affiliated to the Nationalist Movement Party, was also made head of the management board – Albawaba.com
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