Hungary wants to extend the time frame of an emergency credit line it received in 2008, a chief advisor to Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a television interview on Thursday, according to dpa. Hungary was granted a 25-billion-dollar standby loan by the International Monetary Fund, European Union and the World Bank in October 2008 as bankruptcy loomed amid the global financial crisis. Gyorgy Szapary said negotiators would ask the IMF and the EU for an extension until the end of 2010 of the current standby loan agreement, which is due to expire in October. "From 2011 we would like to come under a new agreement," Szapary said. Austerity measures launched by the former socialist government have improved Hungary's balance sheet to the extent that the then finance minister said last November that the next tranche of IMF cash was not needed. However, with the economy remaining fragile and sensitive to external shocks, the IMF and EU agreed the money would remain available as a safety net. Negotiations between the international lenders and Hungary's new centre-right government, which took office in May, will begin in early July when delegations from the IMF and the EU are due in Budapest, Szapary said.
