Turkey seen to be wrapping up talks with IMF soon
ANKARA (Reuters) – An International Monetary Fund team visiting Turkey for talks on the sixth review of a multibillion-dollar loan deal was expected to wrap up by today, a government official said. The team’s talks focused on a social security reform package, delayed to July 1 after a constitutional court veto. The government has yet to decide whether to delay the reform’s implementation further to 2008. A government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters that the IMF, which has a $10 billion standby deal with Turkey, argued that the reform should not be further postponed. The meetings, which started with the business community in Istanbul on March 1 and with officials in Ankara on March 5, had been expected to end on March 15. The IMF also asked for measures to curb a rise in health expenditures and expressed concern over a government decision to hire more than 200,000 public sector workers on temporary contracts as civil servants.
