Riga - Latvia's Finance Minister Einars Repse was en route
to Washington Wednesday as part of an effort to win revised terms for
a 7.5-billion-euro (9.7-billion-dollar) bailout package brokered by
the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Repse was due to visit the IMF and World Bank as part of an annual
Spring meeting between the institutions taking place in the US
capital on April 25-26.
The minister was despatched just hours after the Latvian
government outlined a future Tuesday of enormous spending cuts as the
embattled Baltic state struggles to meet economic criteria laid down
by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Speaking after a lengthy extraordinary meeting of the cabinet,
Repse said the situation 'forces us to look into expenses we promised
to leave untouched earlier.'
Those expenses are likely to include politically sensitive items
such as pensions and healthcare, which had been partially shielded
during earlier rounds of cutbacks.
Previously announced wage reductions of 20 per cent for public
sector workers have already sparked demonstrations by doctors,
teachers and police officers.
Further cuts will prove even less popular, raising the pressure on
the five-party coalition government which has only been in power
since mid-March.
Repse indicated that Latvia's contributions to the European Union
and NATO could be reduced and expressed hope that he could
renegotiate the terms of the economic aid package brokered by the
IMF.
One of the main conditions of the deal was that Latvia would limit
its 2009 budget deficit to 5 per cent of GDP, but even by cutting
budget expenditure by 40 per cent, Latvia would still have a budget
deficit of more than 7 per cent, Repse said.
Latvia has already missed out on one 200-million-euro payment from
the IMF because of its inability to get reforms in place quickly
enough and it risks missing a one-billion-euro payment due in June
that would send the country to the verge of bankruptcy, according to
earlier statements by Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis.
However, Repse claimed Latvia could manage even if the IMF refused
to pay up, though he admitted the result would be yet another round
of cuts.
'If talks do not succeed - and we should always take such a
possibility into account - we should be ready to survive on our own.
We are considering such a scenario. There will be no catastrophe, we
will manage,' he said.
After years of strong growth since it won its independence from
the Soviet Union in 1991, Latvia's economy imploded in 2008. Official
estimates say GDP will shrink by at least 13 per cent in 2009, the
largest projected contraction in the EU.
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