Russia May Get Aid by Summer : Transfusion: The IMF expects to provide up to $50 billion to the former Soviet republics.

Russia may be able to begin drawing billions of dollars worth of assistance from the International Monetary Fund as early as this summer, with the other former Soviet republics following in the next few months, the fund’s managing director predicted Wednesday.

Michel Camdessus said the IMF expects to provide as much as $30 billion to Russia over the next four years and an additional $20 billion to the 14 other former Soviet republics.

Overall, he predicted, the region will need $140 billion from the West, much of it in the form of debt relief. President Bush has said that leading Western governments plan to offer $24 billion this year to Russia, the largest of the new nations.

The 156-nation IMF may grant membership--a prerequisite for aid from the organization--to all but Azerbaijan as early as April 27, when the fund and its sister organization, the World Bank, meet in Washington. Azerbaijan’s entry is being delayed by bureaucratic problems, Camdessus said.

He cautioned that the size and effectiveness of any aid effort will depend on the speed with which the new nations put their economic reform programs into place.

“You need a credible program, credible for the international community and credible for their own people,” Camdessus said.

He expressed confidence that this week’s political turmoil in Russia, in which members of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s Cabinet at one point submitted their resignations because of conservative opposition, will not delay that country’s reform efforts.

“It is not easy to establish at the same time a market economy and a true democracy. You will have setbacks. You will have crises time and again,” he said. “One can expect that finally all these political turmoils will allow better internal dialogue to be established, a better consensus to be formed.”

Camdessus also noted that the rest of the world’s economic health hinges on the speed with which the 15 former Soviet republics can reverse their current downturn.

Last year, for example, their economies shrank by 17%, Camdessus said. If economic reform succeeds in reversing that trend to the point where growth reaches an average 4%--the IMF’s target--the global economy will expand by an additional 2% as a result, he predicted.

By comparison, the IMF is forecasting only 1.4% growth for the world as a whole this year.

Separately, the World Bank predicted better prospects for the rest of the developing world, where per capita income has declined for the last two years. It blamed the slide--which is the first since the bank began collecting such figures in 1965--on wars, the pain brought on by economic and political reform efforts in Eastern Europe, the disruption of such reform efforts elsewhere and slower growth in the industrial countries.

The bank forecast that the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America will see the biggest improvements over the next few years.

World Bank chief economist Lawrence Summers said the best hope for the developing countries is the successful completion of long-stalled global trade talks, which would give them new markets for their exports and make them less dependent on foreign aid.