The 2001 budget bill envisages a budget deficit of 1.5%, gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 5% and 3.5% inflation. This was announced Thursday by Finance Minister Mouravei Radev and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Mission Leader for Bulgaria Juha Kahkonen at a final news conference by the end of the IMF mission's visit here. The current account deficit is envisaged to be between 4.5-4.8%. According to Radev, the end of the three-year agreement between Bulgaria and IMF has been approaching and its implementation has been successful although this has been very hard and many unpopular measures had to be applied. In his view Bulgaria can already feel less dependent on the international financial institutions. The macroeconomic framework of the 2000 budget has not been changed, said Kahkonen. The strong fiscal policy and the additional budget revenues will allow the government run into additional expenses for funding social programmes and mitigate the effect of unemployment