"At this moment the official statement by the Croatian central bank and the government is that we don"t need a stand-by agreement with the IMF," Rohatinski said in the interview headlined "Croatia Has No Need for IMF Bailout", he gave during his attendance of the the IMF and World Bank"s spring meetings in Washington this weekend.
"Croatia will be able to refinance its external obligations," Rohatinski was quoted as saying, while the news agency reported that many eastern European countries were struggling to refinance their maturing external debt because of the global credit shortage.
According to Rohatinski, Croatia's outstanding debt in the first three months remained unchanged from the end of last year, with 70 percent of that owed by the banking system and the largest companies.
"Both are in foreign ownership and it is in the interest of their creditors is to avoid the withdrawal of capital from Croatia," he was quoted as saying.
The agency reports that Rohatinski's predictions put the shrinking of Croatia's economy at four percent with a 10-percent drop in exports.
While sales abroad are plummeting, the central bank needs to reduce the current-account deficit by curbing domestic demand, he said. The HNB bank has maintained its key interest rate at 9 percent since the end of 2007.
"The main problem for Croatia"s economy is the decrease of output demand and I have to cut the current account deficit," he said. "As a combination of these two facts, I expect a decrease of GDP in 2009," rohatinski was quoted as saying.
Croatian Finance Minister Ivan Suker has also said that an IMF bailout was not on the agenda of the Croatian government.
Croatia has earned good marks from the IMF for its revised budget and for its fiscal and monetary policy, and the country is not considering a stand-by arrangement with the IMF at the moment, Minister Suker said in Washington last Friday after talks with IMF and World Bank officials.
Suker said on that occasion that Croatia had so far been relatively successful in fending off the impact of the global economic crisis thanks to "its stable banking and financial sector" and it had already overcome some challenges.