MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AFP) — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Wednesday it will close its office in Nicaragua in August because its job was done helping the country reduce debt and poverty, and to get on the path to sustainable growth.

“This decision reflects the success Nicaragua has had in maintaining macroeconomic stability and growth” since the conclusion of a debt-reduction programme in 2011, the IMF’s representative in the country, Juan Zalduendo, told a media conference.

He added that the IMF would maintain its six other offices in Latin America — Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil and Peru.

The head of Nicaragua’s central bank, Ovidio Reyes, told the same media conference that the closure showed the country’s “good macroeconomic results” in recent years.

The IMF opened its Nicaragua office in 1995 to supervise programmes aimed at stabilising the poor Central American nation’s economy and reining in high foreign debt in the wake of decades of revolution and war.

In 2005, the IMF included Nicaragua in its debt-relief programme under its Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. Nicaragua successfully exited the programme in 2011.

In the last decade the country has posted growth of over four per cent a year, except in 2009 during the global financial crisis.

Last year it announced that between 2009 and 2014 it had cut the proportion of its population living in poverty from 45 per cent to around 30 per cent — an achievement hailed in a February report by the IMF.