In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Minister of Finance and the resident representative of the International Monetary Fund will be seen on Monday 19 July. The opportunity for Gabriel Leost to officially inform Nicolas Kazadi about the decision of the IMF Board to validate a jointly established program.
With our special correspondent in Kinshasa, Sonia Rolley
This IMF financing program for the Democratic Republic of the Congo should, in exchange for reforms and the maintenance of certain indicators, allow for the disbursement of $ 1.5 billion over three years.
At the end of this meeting, the two men took the opportunity to answer some questions from the press. Finance Minister Nicolas Kazadi insisted on interest in this program with the IMF.
“Many are wondering if the program will solve all our problems. No, the program will pave the way for us to solve all our problems, the minister described. The program with the IMF is important because it allows us to certify the progress we are making. But what is important is that the program concluded with the IMF is not the IMF program, but it is our program that we want the IMF to be validated. We have a program that we have set up since 2019 and when you look at all the goals that we have set: whether it is the increase in revenue, the consolidation of taxation, the improvement of the transparency of the mining industry … These are our own goals ”.
“I would even go further,” continued Nicolas Kazadi. I do not remember a single government deciding on different goals, at least in the last decade. In practice, it must now be successful and the first courage is to say “come on, IMF, we take you as a witness to see how we make our progress and we ask you to come and help us on a technical level so that we can “this is the program with the best possible conditions. This is the program with the IMF”.
The Minister also took the opportunity to describe some of the objectives of this program: the Democratic Republic of Kong has promised to double its foreign exchange reserves in three years and to keep inflation at 6%. The IMF representative reminded him that IMF loans were currently zero, so they were very beneficial to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
#RDC #FMI: The IMF representative says that the quantitative targets can be discussed to take into account the development of the world economy with Covid. If the situation worsens or improves, this will be discussed again during periodic reviews.
– Sonia Rolley (@soniarolley) July 19, 2021.
