Delays in signing a new standby agreement between Turkey and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are due to excessive demands from the IMF, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday night, dpa reported.
Erdogan said the delays had nothing to do with speculation in the Turkish press that the government wanted to hold off an agreement until after local elections in March but were instead based on three main issues.
"If we can reach an agreement that is for the benefit of Turkey, then we are ready to sign. If it is not in our interests, we won't sign," Erdogan said in a panel interview including Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa during a flight to Ankara, after local election campaigning in the south-eastern city of Mardin.
Erdogan said the IMF's demands that an autonomous supervisory body be established to oversee financial watchdogs, its opposition to a proposed amnesty-style law to legalize unregistered assets and its insistence that the government rein in increases in government spending were the reasons a deal had not yet been reached.
Talks between the IMF and the Turkish government were suspended in late January.
Turkish business groups have repeatedly called on the government to reach an IMF standby deal, arguing that in the global financial crisis such a deal would act as an anchor for the Turkish economy.
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