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Estonia Will Be Next to Join Euro, World Bank Says
Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Estonia is set to become the next euro member as years of fiscal prudence help the former communist state recover faster than neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, a World Bank economist said.
“It’s doing everything it can to keep the deficit within 3 percent of GDP this year,” Thomas Laursen, the World Bank’s country manager for Poland and the Baltics, said in an interview in Warsaw. “Estonia will be the next country to adopt the euro.”
Laursen is adding his voice to a group of analysts predicting Estonia will achieve euro membership by its target date of January 2011. The International Monetary Fund said this week the country is “well on its way” toward adopting the euro in 2011. Nordea Bank AB, the biggest Nordic lender, said on Nov. 17 the Baltic state’s target is a “realistic dream.”
Lowest EU Debt
The country’s debt to GDP ratio will be 7.4 percent in 2009, the lowest in the European Union, and compares with an estimated average in the 27-member bloc of 73 percent this year, the European Commission said on Nov. 3.
Estonia is “doing much better” with regard to its euro- adoption bid “than the other Baltic countries,” Laursen said.
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