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WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday said it would send a staff mission to Turkey in May to evaluate the country's economic outlook and policy plans, the first such visit in three years.
"The Turkish authorities and IMF management have agreed that the 2010 Article IV consultation will commence with the visit of an IMF staff mission beginning in the first half of May," IMF spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said in a statement.
Atkinson noted that the IMF usually conducts these consultations with member countries on an annual basis but the last one with Turkey was in March 2007.
"The upcoming staff mission will assess in detail the latest developments affecting the Turkish economy, and will exchange views with the Turkish authorities on the outlook and on their policy plans," she said.
The announcement of the staff visit came amid expectations that the IMF and Turkey were nearing agreement on a new loan for the country.
Turkey and the IMF have been discussing terms of the loan for more than a year, notably on the conditions the Fund would impose on Ankara.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in early January that "negotiations will be wrapped up in the space of days or weeks" after disagreements with the IMF were "largely resolved," the Anatolia news agency had reported.
The IMF has never disclosed details of its differences with the Turkish government.
The IMF in 2005 provided Turkey a loan of US$10 billion (7.35 billion euros at today's exchange rate), which expired in 2008.
The Turkish government in January announced a raft of tax increases, particularly on tobacco and fuel, in order to reduce the budget deficit, which was six-fold the original target last year.
The Turkish economy was hard hit by the global economic crisis, with gross domestic product shrinking a hefty 6.5 per cent in 2009, according to IMF estimates.
The Washington-based institution projects the economy will recover this year with growth of 3.7 per cent.
According to the latest Turkish government figures released in March, the economy contracted by 8.4 per cent in the first three quarters of 2009.
The global crisis has deepened the country's already chronic unemployment problem.
Turkey's estimated jobless rate rose to 14 per cent in 2009, up three percentage points from the previous year, official data showed a week ago, as the emerging market economy grappled with a severe recession.
A survey based on interviews with some 366,000 people throughout the year showed the number of jobless to have increased by 860,000 to 3.4 million people, the state statistics institute said.
- AFP/yb
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