IMF Checks up on Macedonia's Finances

The IMF survey of Macedonia’s economic parameters, which should reveal its ability to repay its debt on time, is being led by the IMF’s mission chief for Macedonia, Ivanna Vladkova Hollar.

The IMF said the May 6-19 checkup forms part of its regular post-program monitoring, “aimed for countries that have significant remaining obligations towards the Fund after the expiry of their arrangements”.

The checkup comes when the size of Macedonia’s public debt is a major source of contention. Earlier this year, the government and opposition expressed radically different views about the size of debt.

Opposition Social Democrats accuse the government of pushing Macedonia deep into the red and of hiding the real size of the public debt, which they say may have reached or exceeded 44 per cent of GDP.

The government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski insists that the opposition has exaggerated the problem.

Macedonia’s state debt by the end of December 2013 was 34.3 per cent of GDP, Finance Minister Zoran Stavreski said in February, adding that “this is the fourth lowest [level of debt] in Europe”.

However, what Stavreski calls “state debt” refers only to the debt owed by central government, which the Finance Ministry website puts at €2.7 billion.

This figure does not include, among other matter, the debts of the municipalities, of many public enterprises and companies in central and local ownership and of the central bank.

According to the Law on Public Debt, they all combine with the central government debt to form the public debt.

In late February, the IMF’s executive board assessed that Macedonia needs “further improvements in public financial and debt management, building...