The International Monetary Fund delegation chief to Bucharest Jeffrey Franks declared on Monday that Romania's economy will record a 8% - 8.5% drop this year. "A very severe recession hit Romania", he added. The official said that the "Romanian banking system managed to put up with the negative economic situations", warning that the system will continue to be stressed.

These are the mains statements Jeffrey Franks made:

The IMF team has been here for the last ten days and we worked close to European Commission and World Bank representatives.We worked well with Romania's Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and other ministers and agencies' representatives.I'm glad we reached an agreement regarding the mission of experts for the evaluation of this first assistance programme period.We reached an agreement with the Romanian authorities regarding what has been done so far and what needs be done in the future.Now we need to discuss it with the Fund's leadership and with the board.The IMF leadership will have the last say regarding the evaluation.Immediately after the board will decide on this evaluation, the second instalment of the loan will be made available straight away.The targets for the end of June have been respected from a quantitative point of view, with one exception. (...) We will resume our investigation later, when we will have the final data.We had two structural criteria for performance, whose targets were to be reached by end of June and they were met: ratifying of certain legal actions of fiscal nature in parliament and modifying the legislation addressing the fund for deposit insurance.Meeting these targets shows the efforts made by this Government, especially through the Ministry of Finance led by Gheorghe Pogea, to secure the control of spending to avoid side-slipping from the agreed target.These efforts have been absolutely necessary