The International Monetary Fund on Friday approved a 3.65-billion-dollar loan to Turkey, the final segment of a three-year stand-by credit worth nearly 10 billion dollars.
"The Turkish economy has continued to perform reasonably well despite a challenging external environment, with economic activity showing resilience and foreign direct investment inflows remaining buoyant," IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.
The IMF executive board completed Friday its seventh and final review of the economic reforms it had demanded the Turkish government undertake in exchange for the credit, the multilateral institution said.
The board particularly praised Turkey's social security and tax reforms.
Turkey and the IMF signed the stand-by arrangement on May 11, 2005. It replaced a three-year IMF agreement in 2001 that enabled Ankara to overcome a severe financial crisis.
The current agreement expires Saturday and the Turkish government is expected to decide whether it wants to strike a new agreement with the IMF, a sensitive question amid declining demand for the institution's loans.
Asked about this point in a conference call with reporters, the IMF mission chief for Turkey, Lorenzo Giorgianni, said that the Turkish government had not yet told the IMF if it wanted further financial services, and if so, what kind.
Since its creation 64 years ago, the IMF has derived the majority of its finances and a large share of its legitimacy from the loans it grants to nations in financial distress.
But in recent years a growing number of developing countries have preferred market financing rather than the obligation to adhere to the IMF's strict lending conditions.
"I am sure the government is considering their options carefully," Giorgianni told reporters.
Turkey basically has two options, he said.
"One would be to have a successor arrangement which most likely would be a non-disbursing arrangement, that is a precautionary stand-by; the other option would be entering a period of enhanced surveillance" during which Turkey's economic prospects and policies would be examined twice a year.
The 185-nation IMF examines members' economies once a year.
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