Latvia wants to reduce reliance on bailout: PM

(RIGA) - Latvia wants to meet international investors who have provided the country with a multi-billion euro bailout to review the payment format, Latvia's premier said Thursday.

"We are talking about a possible review of the schedule of receiving the instalment payments or receiving part of payment not as credit, but as a credit line, which we could use when needed," Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said.

"At this point, there's no talk that we intend to forgo any part of the international loan," he said.

"We see that the financial resources in the state treasury are sufficient. We won't need to save up unnecessary significant resources in the state treasure and pay on it interest," Dombrovskis added.

Following the collapse of the real estate bubble and nationalisation of the largest locally-owned bank, Latvia was forced to seek a hefty 7.5-billion-euro (10.2-billion-dollar) loan from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and other lenders in December 2008.

Latvia has been receiving money in instalments. The European Union is expected to transfer the next instalment of 500 million euros on Thursday, Dombrovskis said.

Latvia, a small Baltic nation of 2.2 million people, is in the middle of the deepest recession in the 27-nation European Union, with its economy expected to have contracted 18 percent in 2009.