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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Beltran who wrote (6968)	10/6/1998 10:44:00 PM
From: Derrick P.	Respond to of 9980

Probably beating this one to death but hopefully this will help finalize the thought: biz.yahoo.com Turkmens say IMF failure causes debt problem WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Turkmenistan on Tuesday slammed what it saw as the failure of IMF programs in its neighboring countries as the reason those nations had stalled on payments for gas supplies. In an unusually outspoken speech at the International Monetary Fund's annual meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Yelly Gurbanmuradov said: ''Turkmenistan is facing a clear case of financial contagion arising out of the failure of Fund programs.'' The programs had done nothing to ensure payments by Turkmenistan's Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) neighbors. Arrears for gas payments stood at $1.3 billion as of the end of 1997, he said. ''Just as it has sought to assist the orderly rescheduling of debt for Western bankers involved in lending to Asian countries, so the Fund must require debtor countries within the CIS to sit down with their creditors...and agree on firm repayment schedules,'' Gurbanmuradov said. Failure to do so should incur sanctions in the form of program suspension or penalty interest charges on Fund loans. ''If the Fund feels it necessary to overrule such sanctions, compensatory financing should be paid to the creditor country involved from the Fund's own resources,'' he said. Gurbanmuradov, who runs the Central Asian state's monetary and fiscal policy, said any agreed debt repayments to the cash-starved desert state of four million people should take priority over other debt payments, such as those to overseas banks. Many commercial loans in the region were based on speculative transactions rather than genuine trade or development financing, he added. ''It would be most unfair to see relatively poor countries disadvantaged in the debt resolution at the expense of legally advantaged speculators,'' he said, warning that the payments system of the CIS region could collapse if action were not taken soon. Yeah it could happen (the IMF could make sure they get paid). Not! Derrick