"The Fund did not impose any diktats," Azour said, according
to the TAP state news agency.
The IMF postponed in December its board meeting on a loan
program for Tunisia that was scheduled to give the authorities
more time to finalize it.
But Tunisia's President Kais Saied gave his clearest
rejection yet of the terms of a stalled $1.9 billion IMF bailout
package when he said last week he would not accept "diktats" and
suggested that subsidy cuts could lead to unrest.
Tunisia reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF for the
loan in September, but it has already missed key commitments,
and donors believe the state's finances are increasingly
diverging from the figures used to calculate the deal.
"This program has been designed, proudly by the Tunisian
authorities," Azour said during the briefing. "A team of more
than 100 high civil servants around the prime minister were
working on the design of the program. This is a program that
will help Tunisia stabilize its economy, address - in a world of
high uncertainty - the challenges in terms of getting access to
finance."
The reform package includes reducing food and energy subsidies, restructuring public companies, and reducing the public wage bill. Without a loan, Tunisia faces a full-blown balance of payments crisis. Most debt is internal but there are foreign loan repayments due later this year, and credit ratings agencies have said Tunisia may default. (Reporting by Tarek Amara; Additional reporting by Dan Burns in Washington; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
