【英语财经】阿塞拜疆或接受40亿美元纾困 IMF and World Bank move to forestall oil-led defaults

Officials from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are heading to Azerbaijan to discuss a possible $4bn emergency loan package in what risks becoming the first of a series of bailouts stemming from the tumbling oil price.

The Baku visit, which follows a currency crisis triggered by the collapse in crude, comes amid concern at the two global institutions over emerging market producers from central Asia to Latin America.

The fund and the bank have also been monitoring developments in other oil-producing countries such as Brazil, which is now mired in its worst recession in more than a century, and Ecuador. The oil-driven crisis in Venezuela has even raised the possibility of repaired relations between the fund and Caracas, a city IMF staff last visited more than a decade ago.

Azerbaijan depends on oil and gas for 95 per cent of its exports and the fallout of its currency weakness has sparked a series of protests across the country rattling the government of President Ilham Aliyev.

Last week the former Soviet republic became one of the first countries in the world to resort to capital controls in response to the collapse in oil prices, imposing a 20 per cent tax on exporting foreign currency.

The Azerbaijani currency, the manat, has fallen 35 per cent since the central bank in late December abandoned a dollar peg after spending more than half its reserves in a year.

The IMF team would be in Baku from January 28 until February 4 for “a fact-finding staff visit at the authorities’ request”, an IMF spokesperson said. It would discuss possible “technical assistance” and “assess possible financing needs”. The financing package under discussion was worth about $4bn, people familiar with the discussions said.

A World Bank spokesman said the IMF and it were discussing with the government immediate and longer-term measures “in response to the pressure on the local currency and low oil prices”.

The World Bank predicted this week crude prices would average just $37 a barrel this year and warned of long-term consequences. It also issued a caution that both producers and commodity markets still faced the significant risk of a bigger than expected slowdown in major oil-consuming emerging economies like China.

“These are bad times for oil producers and their creditors,” Oxford Economics warned clients on Wednesday. “History provides reason for extreme pessimism on the likely fortunes of commodity producers; suggesting that [emerging markets] are prone to default and that commodity slumps are possibly the biggest cause of defaults.”

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, began the year with a visit to Nigeria when she warned that Africa’s largest economy would have to confront “tough choices” and the reality of lower oil prices for some time.

Discussions with Baku are at an early stage and the Azerbaijani government may yet opt to go without support from the IMF, people familiar with the matter said.

While Azerbaijan’s central bank reserves have fallen dramatically in the past year, the country has little debt and a sovereign wealth fund with assets of $34.7bn at the start of October, more than 60 per cent of GDP.

However, the fall in oil prices has put the Azerbaijani economy under extreme stress. Elman Rustamov, the central bank governor, said last week that over the course of 2015 the country’s balance of payments had fallen from $17bn to “practically zero”. Moody’s, the credit rating agency, said last month it expected Azerbaijan to record a budget deficit of 5.5 per cent in 2016 after a 9.2 per cent deficit last year.

Representatives of the Baku government did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Samir Sharifov, finance minister, said in an interview on Azerbaijani television broadcast over the weekend that government bonds issued on the domestic market would be “one of the sources” to cover the budget deficit.

Delegations from other international financial institutions, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank, are also due to arrive in Baku in the next few days.

来自国际货币基金组织(IMF)和世界银行(WB)的官员正前往阿塞拜疆(Azerbaijan)，就可能的40亿美元紧急贷款方案开展磋商，这可能会成为因油价暴跌引发的一系列纾困行为中的第一个。

这次对巴库的访问之前，原油价格的崩盘刚刚引发一轮货币危机。此次对巴库开展访问之际，从中亚到拉美的新兴市场石油生产国，都令这两家全球机构担心不已。

IMF和世行也一直在监控巴西和厄瓜多尔等其他产油国形势的发展变化。目前，巴西正陷入一个多世纪以来最严重的经济衰退。在委内瑞拉，油价引发的危机甚至增大了IMF和委内瑞拉政府之间修复关系的可能性——而IMF人员上次访问委内瑞拉首都加拉加斯还是在逾10年前。

阿塞拜疆95%的出口依赖石油和天然气。该国货币的疲软在全国引发了一系列抗议活动，令阿塞拜疆总统伊利哈姆?阿利耶夫(Ilham Aliyev)领导的政府十分不安。

上周，这个前苏联加盟共和国向对外输出的外汇收取20%的税，成为全球首个采取资本管制措施应对油价崩盘的国家。

去年12月底，经历了在一年时间里耗尽逾半数外汇储备之后，阿塞拜疆央行放弃了紧盯美元的政策。自那以来，阿塞拜疆货币马纳特已下跌35%。

一名IMF发言人表示，IMF团队将在巴库从1月28日停留至2月4日，以“按照当局要求考察事实情况”。该团队将就可能的“技术援助”开展磋商，并“评估可能的融资需求”。知情人士表示，正在讨论的融资方案价值约为40亿美元。

世界银行发言人表示，IMF和该机构正与阿塞拜疆政府就“应对国内货币和低油价压力”的紧急措施和较长期措施开展磋商。

知情人士表示，与巴库方面的磋商还处于早期阶段，阿塞拜疆政府仍可能选择不要IMF的支持。

尽管过去一年里阿塞拜疆央行外汇储备已急剧减少，该国却基本没什么债务，去年10月初其主权财富基金持有的资产为347亿美元，超过其国内生产总值的60%。

包括欧洲复兴开发银行(European Bank for Reconstruction and Development)和亚洲开发银行(Asian Development Bank)在内的其他国际金融机构的代表，也将在今后几天抵达巴库。

译者/简易