Hungary’s prime minister has long had a testy relationship with the International Monetary Fund — and on Thursday he used Facebook to unfriend the agency and reject its allegedly tough loan conditions.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a video message on his official Facebook page that Hungary could not accept pension cuts, the elimination of a bank tax, fewer public employees and other conditions in exchange for an IMF loan that other officials have said could be about €15 billion ($18.9 billion).
The IMF’s list of conditions, Orban said, “contains everything that is not in Hungary’s interests.”
Orban’s announcement took the markets by surprise, in part because just a day earlier he had said loan negotiations with the IMF and the European Union were going according to schedule and both sides were willing to reach an agreement.
The forint, Hungary’s currency, initially weakened 1.5 percent against the euro after Orban’s Facebook video, while the benchmark index of the Budapest Stock Exchange fell from over 18,000 points to below 17,700 before closing at 17,949 points.
Orban said his government would work on an “alternative negotiation proposal” because both he and his Fidesz party agreed that a deal under such IMF demands would be unacceptable. Full story...
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Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a video message on his official Facebook page that Hungary could not accept pension cuts, the elimination of a bank tax, fewer public employees and other conditions in exchange for an IMF loan that other officials have said could be about €15 billion ($18.9 billion).
The IMF’s list of conditions, Orban said, “contains everything that is not in Hungary’s interests.”
Orban’s announcement took the markets by surprise, in part because just a day earlier he had said loan negotiations with the IMF and the European Union were going according to schedule and both sides were willing to reach an agreement.
The forint, Hungary’s currency, initially weakened 1.5 percent against the euro after Orban’s Facebook video, while the benchmark index of the Budapest Stock Exchange fell from over 18,000 points to below 17,700 before closing at 17,949 points.
Orban said his government would work on an “alternative negotiation proposal” because both he and his Fidesz party agreed that a deal under such IMF demands would be unacceptable. Full story...
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