A mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will visit Belgrade from May 18 to 27, where they will start preliminary talks with Serbian officials on a precautionary stand-by arrangement with Serbia, the IMF Office in Belgrade confirmed to Tanjug on Monday.

The mission will be led by Albert Jaeger, who already headed the IMF team during talks on Serbia's previous credit arrangement, it was announced.

Head of the IMF Office in Serbia Bogdan Lissovolik told Tanjug earlier that the mission will again focus on macroeconomic trends and forecasts, as well as measures targeted at the key weaknesses of the Serbian economy.

This set of measures will serve as the basis for the precautionary arrangement with Serbia, Lissovolik said and added that the Serbian government has said it would like the new arrangement to start in September.

We plan to discuss this over two missions - the mission in May could make a preliminary draft for the program of measures, while the second mission toward the end of the summer would conclude the talks, Lissovolik said.

Serbia concluded a two-year stand-by arrangement with the IMF on April 15. The loan totaled around EUR 3 billion intended for boosting the country's foreign exchange reserves, but Serbia only withdrew half of the funds.

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic visited Washington in mid April for the spring sessions of the World Bank and the IMF, where he discussed a new precautionary arrangement between the IMF and Serbia, which would not obligate the country to withdraw new funds.