OREANDA-NEWS. The Board of the EurAsEC Financial Bailout Fund recommends that the National Bank of Belarus should take a hard line on hard-currency loans in order to restrain credit expansion within 19% in 2013, taking care to keep the average monthly credit expansion under 1.5%.

The Anti-Crisis Fund made a statement to this effect in its evaluation report, which followed a report by the Finance Ministry of Belarus on fulfilling the terms of the fifth tranche of the EurAsEC stand-by loan.

In its report the Finance Ministry admitted that the average monthly credit expansion stood at 1.73% in Q1 2013.

The Anti-Crisis Fund puts the blame on the expansion of hard-currency loans provided by Belarusian banks (2.7% per month on average), while the average monthly increase in the ruble loan portfolio stood at 1%.

The level of credit expansion is one of the key performance benchmarks (as opposed to performance indictors) for the EurAsEC to provide Belarus with the next tranches of the stand-by loan.

The Anti-Crisis Fund reckons that Belarus will have to put credit expansion on hold of the current account deficit deteriorates amid high expectations of ruble devaluation.

The Anti-Crisis Fund wants Belarus to keep pursuing a tough monetary management policy, put the brakes on inflation growth and grow international reserves to a safe level.

ўHit by a financial crisis in 2011, Minsk agreed on a USD 3 billion stabilization loan from EurAsEC's fund in several tranches from 2011 to 2013. The fund has already provided one USD 800 million and three USD 440 million tranches to the bailout of the country.