OREANDA-NEWS. October 18, 2012. The assessment mission of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) holds consultations on October 15–19 over the allocation of the fourth tranche worth USD 440 million to Belarus under an anti-crisis program, Viktor Gulyaev, director of the Russian-led Eurasian Development Bank’s local branch.

At present, the EurAsEC comprises Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

Gulyaev pointed out that a mission of the International Monetary Fund will also be working in Belarus in the same period. “It will be most likely an interplay (of two missions),” the bank’s branch director added.

As previously reported, Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak made a statement in June that Belarus is very likely to receive the fourth, USD 440 million tranche of a USD 3 billion loan from the Eurasian Economic Community’s financial bailout fund led by Russia by the end of 2012.

Storchak said that Belarus had been successfully performing its obligations. “Foreign exchange reserves are at the level that we had previously agreed upon, they cover three months of imports and we are more than satisfied with that,” he said.

According to Storchak, Belarus could stabilize the national currency’s exchange rate without monetary interventions but the privatization program is facing obstacles. Under the deal, which has helped Belarus avert economic collapse, Minsk pledged to sell USD 2.5 billion worth of state assets a year for three years. Since then, it has sold its gas pipeline network to Russia's Gazprom.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said earlier that the tranche will be approved between September and November after Belarus privatizes a few companies.

Belarus, hit by a financial crisis in 2011, has agreed with the fund over a stabilizing loan which is to be disbursed in several tranches from 2011 to 2013.

The fund has already disbursed USD 800 million and USD 440 million of the bailout to Belarus.