"We hope that the second half of May may serve as a time frame for the next annual mission of the IMF that will conduct consultations on the economic situation in the country and for the start of talks on a possible new programme for Bosnia and Herzegovina," Cuc said as quoted by the Dnevni Avaz newspaper of Wednesday.
Cuc did not specify conditions under which the IMF might approve a new standby arrangement for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the newspaper said that the authorities needed it to patch up the existing holes in the budgets of the country's two entities.
A further problem was a recent downgrade of Bosnia and Herzegovina's sovereign rating by Moody's agency, which put it only a notch above countries that are treated as bankrupt.
Cuc said that the credit rating downgrade was partly prompted by the political crisis in the country as a result of which no budget for this year has been adopted yet and the country has been operating on an interim budget.