Reza Baqir is the new head of the IMF mission to Romania

Newsroom 11/01/2016 | 11:45

Andrea Schaechter, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission to Romania, has ended her mandate after two and a half years, and was replaced by Reza Baqir, who will be visiting Bucharest on 12-15 January to be introduced to the authorities, announced Guillermo Tolosa, the IMF resident representative for Romania and Bulgaria, according to Mediafax newswire.

Working for the IMF since 2000, Baqir was head of the Debt Policy Division of the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department for four years before joining the Fund’s Department for Europe, says Agerpres. Throughout his career he has contributed to tax and debt policies during the crisis in Cyprus, Ghana, Greece, Jamaica, Portugal, Ukraine, etc., and has represented the IMF at the Paris Club meetings various times, further added Agerpres.

Baqir is a graduate of Harvard University with a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked with the World Bank, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Union Bank of Switzerland, according to Agerpres.

From September 2013 to September 2015, Romania has had a Stand-By Arrangement with the IMF of about EUR 1.98 billion, representing 170% of Romania’s quota at the IMF, according to the National Bank of Romania (BNR) . To this, the 2013-2015 balance-of-payments financial assistance programme from the European Union was added that ended on 30 September 2015, post-programme surveillance having already started and that will continue until at least May 2018, according to the European Commission.

Andreea Tint