Dominique Strauss-Khan, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, arrived today in Bucharest, after visiting Poland. He is accompanied by the European department director Marek Belka and IMF mission chief in Romania, Jeffrey Franks.
The delay in swapping the national currency for the euro is not a bad thing, the important thing is that Romania is ready.
The delay in euro adoption by Romania is not necessarily a bad thing; it is more important that Romania is ready to make this step, said the managing director of IMF.
Speaking at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies Dominique Strauss-Kahn said “the agreement with IMF, EU and other institutions is not restricting the country’s euro adoption process. On the contrary, its purpose is to prepare Romania for the swapping”, said
“Putting off the ERM 2-accession goal of 2012 and euro adoption in 2015, wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The road to the euro adoption and meeting the conditionality by Romania is much more important”, he added.
IMF director stressed that Romania should be more concerned on “doing its homeworks” to adopt the euro, whether the 2015 target is kept or not.
“The only way to avoid a global economic collapse is to swap a portion of the private debt with public debt, which was a good thing, in my opinion, but now we’re dealing with public debt problem, that must be solved as soon as possible. The governments must address the huge public debt issues, and now”, said the head of IMF.
“You will have to work harder to emerge from crisis and improve your economic development on a long-term”, said Dominique Strauss-Khan.
“More Romanians will lose their jobs in the next months, April, May, June… Because the unemployment rate will not go down so fast, and authorities will have to struggle to shore up the economy”, he added.
