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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: djane who wrote (7929)	9/13/1998 2:31:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22640

IMF Funds Pushed By Rubin, Clinton [$15B line of credit to Latin America. Rubin and Clinton speeches on Monday] FINANCE The News M‚xico City, September 13, 1998. By HEATHER FLEMING And DANIEL MOSS Bloomberg News WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Bill Clinton said he and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin will mount an intensified push to get Congress to approve additional funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A day after the release of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report charging that Clinton lied, tried to obstruct justice and abused the power of the presidency, Clinton said in his weekly radio address he intends to focus on issues like the economy, health care and combating terrorism. Obtaining 17.9 billion dollars in new funds from Congress for the IMF -- which may be called on to assist Brazil and other Latin American nations, after being stretched by earlier aid plans for Russia and Asian nations -- must be a priority, Clinton said. ''Treasury Secretary Rubin and I will go to New York on Monday where I will discuss the current challenges of the global economy and the risks to our prosperity unless we act on the IMF request and take some other steps designed to make sure that America does not become a sea of prosperity in an ocean of distress,'' Clinton said in the radio address. The Clinton speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York will be at 11:50 a.m. local time, White House officials said. Rubin still intends to deliver a previously scheduled speech on Monday at 4:45 p.m. in Charlotte, N.C. The IMF is expected to soon consider paying Russia the next 4.3 billion-dollar installment of 22.6 billion dollars in loans. IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer said this week that payment of that installment would require at least ''the restoration of a coherent macroeconomic framework and a set of plans by the government to deal with the underlying structural problems.'' Key to that effort, he said, is to ''get a tax system that works.'' Clinton and Yeltsin also discussed the meeting that senior finance and foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations will hold Monday in London. The G-7 meeting will discuss ways to help Russia out of its economic crisis, and their conclusions will be passed on to a meeting of G-7 finance ministers and bankers in Washington on Oct. 3. Late Friday, the IMF announced it's prepared to make fresh loans to Latin America as Brazil battles to stem an outflow of dollars that was surpassing 1 billion dollars a day. Describing the slide in Latin American markets in recent days as an ''over-reaction to Russian events,'' the fund's second ranking official, Stanley Fischer, said the IMF is prepared to tap a 15 billion dollar line of credit with major industrial nations to meet any requests for money, if they come, from Latin American nations. The IMF's resources have been depleted by bailouts for Thailand, South Korea, Russia, and Indonesia. As it was, the IMF had to tap the line of credit, known as the General Agreement to Borrow, or GAB, to get together most of the 15.1 billion dollars in new money committed to Russia in July. Aside from the GAB, the IMF only has between about 5 billion dollars and 9 billion dollars in its accounts available for lending, Fischer said Thursday. The U.S. Senate voted last week to fund U.S. operations abroad, including 17.9 billion dollars for the IMF, the second time this year it has approved cash for the fund. But in the House of Representatives, Republicans have sought to force the IMF to make drastic changes in its policies. A House committee Thursday voted to give the IMF only 3.4 billion dollars, delaying a final decision on the lender's funding until later this month when House and Senate negotiators meet to resolve differences in the two chambers' bills. There could be a way around this if the Brazil situation worsens. In 1995, the United States put together a 50 billion-dollar international loan package to bail out Mexico. Over the objections of some Republicans in Congress, Rubin pledged as much as 20 billion dollars from the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which he controls, after Congress balked at appropriating money to help Mexico avoid default. [FINANCE]

To: djane who wrote (7929)	9/13/1998 2:34:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 22640

G-7 Schedules Meeting Over Russia [Emergency meeting on Monday] Saturday September 12 12:51 PM EDT LONDON (AP) - Britain announced Friday that an emergency meeting of officials from the Group of Seven nations will be held Monday to discuss Russia's economic crisis. The meeting, called by Prime Minister Tony Blair, is expected to consider an aid package to rescue the Russian economy. Officials have already said any new assistance would likely be dependent on the Russia government pursuing free-market reforms. Officials from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union will also be present at the talks. Britain holds the rotating presidency of the G-7, which groups the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Britain. The group also meets as the G-8 with Russia. Copyright c 1998 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.