IMF: Review of programs in Eastern Europe/FSU
Overview:
As the global financial crisis started to hit Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, a number of countries that thought they had graduated from the need to have an IMF program suddenly requested assistance from the Fund as capital inflows dried up. The exception was Georgia which had already just turned to the IMF for help following the war with Russia that August. As one might expect, progress under respective IMF programs has varied. Georgia and Hungary have regularly completed reviews in an exemplary fashion. Some countries (e.g. Serbia, Bosnia) are broadly on track even if there has been an occasional delay in progress. In other cases, (Ukraine, Romania and Latvia) significant political noise has pushed programs off-track.