Quote of the day: “Representatives sitting in Washington and educated at Yale do not fully understand what is going on in Latvia”, Latvian Economics Minister Kampars yesterday on the Latvian TV programme 900 sekundes.

As they point out, when the borrowers publicly criticise the lenders in this way, something must be going on.

While Mr. Kampars might be right on his assessment of the IMF staff, it is certainly unhelpful for further negotiations (if there are to be any) to bad mouth the institution that is supposed to give Latvia a loan. In our view it increasingly looks like the IMF will not pay out the next instalment on Latvia’s loan. This not only has ramifications for Latvia, but should also be a reminder to investors that the IMF is not just a “money machine” that automatically bails out all countries with funding needs.

Also Danskebank provide some simple calculations to illustrate the extent to which Latvia does still need the IMF funds:

A back of the envelope calculation illustrates this. In June, central government spent about EUR 125m more than came in revenues and funding. Assuming that this “burn rate” continues for the rest of the year (August-December) then that adds up to EUR 625m for the rest of the year. Furthermore, during the rest of the year EUR 715m worth of t-bills are maturing which need to be rolled over. Hence, the refinancing of maturing debt and the monthly cash burn adds up to EUR 1,340m. In our assessment the Latvian state treasury probably has EUR 540m in liquidity at the moment. That leaves the Latvian central government with a funding need of EUR 799m. This is why it is important that the EC in the Supplemental MoU ties up half of the EUR 1.2bn instalment for the financial sector, as the amount that will be “free” to cover the budget deficit will be less than the funding need (EUR 600m vs EUR 799m).

Thus, according to Danske the Latvian government will be around 200 million euros short by the end of the year – unless it is able to roll over more than half of the maturing debt, something which would require sustained perfect conditions for issuance in the local money markets for the rest of the year, unlikely given that the international markets are more or less closed to Latvian debt, and that non receipt of the IMF share would hardly increase the risk appetite.

Parex Update

The situation at Parex bank seems to be giving rise to all sorts of speculation at the moment. It has been suggested that the Banks owners have been systematically taking advantage of the bailout to line their own pockets. Some support for this view can be found in the statement of the Latvian Finance Ministry last Friday that it had asked the state prosecutor’s office to probe Parex takeover last year.

RIGA, July 17 (Reuters) – Latvia’s Finance Ministry said on Friday it had asked the state prosecutor’s office to probe the state takeover last year of a major bank that helped trigger the need for the country’s IMF-led bailout.

The IMF has delayed its latest share of lending in the bailout, though the EU has decided to give a further 1.2 billion euros. The prime minister said he would hold more talks next week with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Some local media reports and politicians have criticised the wisdom of taking over the country’s second largest bank, Parex, and the way it was done. Most recently the media has reported that some former employees left with big handouts. Finance Minister Einars Repse said he had asked the prosecutor’s office to investigate the takeover to clear up such controversies

What the connection is (if any) between the “Parex affair” and all the other unknowns we have in our equation set at the moment still remains to be seen.

And finally, to close, here’s yet another Latvia quote, this time from former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff:

“It is so clear that Latvia’s peg is ultimately unsustainable, all protestations by Latvian government officials notwithstanding,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the I.M.F.. “But ultimately unsustainable pegs can go on for years before crashing and burning, and Brussels seems to be willing to pay a lot to get past the financial crisis before cutting the cord on Latvia.”

Izabella Kaminska at FT Alphaville has the story (via Reuters):

The International Monetary Fund has put forward new, difficult conditions for Latvia to receive further loans, the prime minister said on Wednesday in a further sign the Fund is being tougher than the European Commission.

It isn’t clear at this point what these conditions are. Rumour has it they may be an end to the flat income tax, or a hike in VAT. A hike in VAT would be more hari-kiri, since this would again hit consumption AND would boost inflation at a time when they are trying to deflate to carry through an internal currency correction. It also isn’t clear whether this is a serious attempt to add new conditions (which I find unlikely, given how advanced the distemper is) or whether this is a way for the IMF to get themselves off the hook (ie leave the EU Commission to stew in its own juice) without having a public and potentially damaging break with the EU. The IMF need to find some sort of exit strategy I think (since Latvia evidently at this point doesn’t have one), or it risks losing its own credibility if it puts a seal of approval (by granting the next tranche) on something which most external specialists now think could end up in a very messy grande finale. Argentina ghosts are stalking the corridors in Washington, not because of the similarities between the two countries (they are, at the end of the day pretty different), but because of the way giving a final “kiss of death” loan to a country can ultimately come back and haunt you.

Update One

The local Latvian news agency is saying that if Latvia and the IMF do not sign the new agreement by Friday, Latvia may not see the next chunk of the IMF loan and it could jeopardize the further funding from the EC. This could be brinksmanship, but even brinkmanship can go badly wrong if the other party can’t concede. And who is the other party here? Latvia or the EU Commission, since they already said they are happy with progress. What a muddle!

Update Two – Thursday Afternoon

Bloomberg’s Aaron Eglitis reports this afternoon that Friday may in fact not be any kind of deadline. He quotes Caroline Atkinson, head of external relations at the IMF, in Washington, to the effect that the head of the IMF mission in Riga is returning to Washington this weekend as scheduled, while the mission itself would “continue its work.” This suggests there will be no final decision this week. She also said there was “broad consensus among all the parties involved” about the goals for Latvia, declining to go into specifics.

Rumourology has it that the IMF wants the government to become more effective in revenue collection, with the fear that the current contraction may be so strong due to the fact that part of the economy is disappearing back into a “grey area” as a backdrop. Various proposals are being floated around, but perhaps it would be better to wait for some concrete information before speculating about this.

Latvian central bank Governor Ilmars Rimsevics has also been holding a press conference in Riga today, and he took the opportunity to suggest that the country’s budget deficit was likely to grow to between 9.5 percent and 10 percent this year. If this is the case, then this would obviously put Latvia outside the 60% gross debt to GDP criteria by 2010, which would make euro membership as an exit strategy non viable over the relevant horizon in my view. Just a long shot, but maybe that is what they are all arguing about. The EU clearly has to offer the four peggars more in the way of a carrot, although they themselves need to remember – looking over at Slovakia and Slovenia – that mere euro membership is no panacea to cure all ills.

The Russian ruble strengthened the most in more than three months against the dollar this morning (gaining 1.7 percent to 32.2247 per dollar at one point) as oil rebounded above $60 a barrel and OAO Sberbank reported better-than-expected earnings. Sberbank shares jumped 5.1 percent after first-quarter net income turned out to be above analyst estimates. But the rise was also helped by the fact that Russia’s central bank spent approximately $2 billion from reserves to try to stop the ruble from falling yesterday, taking central bank reserve spending over the two working days since they lowered interest rates half a percantage point on Friday to around $4 billion, according to reports in the newspaper Kommersant.

Russia’s central bank cut its main interest rates for the fourth time in less than three months at the end of last week after the government estimated the economy contracted an annual 10.2 percent in the January-May period. Bank Rossii lowered the refinancing rate to 11 percent from 11.5 percent following on initial reduction on April 24 and two further cuts on May 13 and June 5.

But the striking thing here is that today’s ruble surge followed seven consecutive days when it fell – including yesterday when it dropped 0.5 percent against the euro and 0.1 percent against the dollar to hit the lowest close against the central bank’s currency basket since May 4. Indeed only last week the ruble posted its steepest slide against the euro and dollar since January as oil prices fell and Russia’s budget deficit contined towiden. And to top it all, as I say, the central bank reduced interest rates for the fourth time in less than three months. Continue reading →

Two weeks ago I drew attention to a revealing press conference given by IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky and European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer where it seemed a rather different posture was being taken on the Latvian question than that which is being transmitted from Brussels. Then P O’Neill found a message on Twitter which suggested the topic of the Latvian budget had been unexpectedly added to the EcoFin agenda.

Today Bloomberg report that Barclays Capital’s chief economist for emerging Europe Christian Keller thinks that the IMF’s posture of continuing to withhold funds even after the approval of the spending cuts “signaled that the rift between the IMF and EU has widened” .

Now I don’t want to see connections were there are none, but it is a coincidence that Christian Keller works for the same Barclays capital whose Head of Emerging Markets Strategy Eduardo Levy-Yeyati recently published a lengthy analysis on the influential Voxeu – entitled Is Latvia the new Argentina? – where he argued that: “The strategy of engineering an “internal” depreciation under a peg in Latvia (via contractionary fiscal policy, wage cuts and price deflation) implicit in the IMF program is proving too painful, if not self-defeating as in the 2001 collapse of Argentina’s currency board”

Now the publication of this article was interesting since Eduardo Levy-Yayati is not just any old economist. Previous to joining Barclays Capital, as his Voxeu biography informs us, he was

“a Senior Financial Sector Advisor for Latin America & the Caribbean at The World Bank. Previously, a Senior Research Associate at the Inter-American Development Bank, the Director of Monetary and Financial Policies and Chief Economist for the Central Bank of Argentina, and the Director of the Center for Financial Research and Professor of Economics and Finance at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. He has also worked as consultant for the IMF, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, among many public and private institutions. His research on emerging markets banking and finance has been published extensively in top international economic journals. “

That is, Señor Levy-Yayati is an extremely experienced economist, an old Argentina hand, and enjoys some considerable influence over emerging markets issues in Washington. So was the appearance of the article in Voxeu at the end of June totally coincidental? He certainly is experienced enough to know what he is doing in these matters. And was it also a coincidence that only a week later former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund Ken Rogoff – surely another person who knows perfectly well what he is doing – gave an interview where he said that “Latvia should devalue the lats to avoid a worsening of its economic crisis” and that “the IMF made the wrong decision when it allowed Latvia to keep its currency peg”?

The IMF cannot say what it really thinks for obvious reasons, but could we construe Levy-Yayati and Rogoff as thinking out loud on the funds behalf?

The clash between the two institutions (should such a clash exist) derives from “ideological differences” according to Keller. “The IMF is focused on economic questions such as the sustainability of the currency peg, the use of economic stimulus or the idea of fast-track euro adoption……The EU’s main concern is political, such as euro-adoption rules and the implementation of convergence programs”.

This all rings pretty true, and it rings even truer when you note that the Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said only last week that the country “may not need the IMF share of the financing”. As Keller says, “The Latvia program has become a headache for the IMF.” Continue reading →