MOSCOW, October 22 (RIA Novosti) - The International Monetary Fund has decided to grant another tranche of some $699 million as a standby loan to Belarus.

"The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today completed the second review of Belarus's performance under an economic program supported by a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). This decision enables the disbursement of about $699.5 million, bringing total disbursements under the program so far to about $2.23 billion," the agency said in a statement on its website.

On January 12, 2009, the IMF approved a 15-month standby loan worth about $2.46 billion and the Fund's experts later recommended the IMF board to increase the loan facility by $1 billion.

Earlier in the month Belarus' neighbor, Russia, decided not to disburse the last $500 million tranche of a $2 billion stabilization loan to Belarus.

Russia decided late last year to allocate a $2 billion loan to Belarus. The former Soviet republic has already received $1.5 billion, but Russia's Finance Ministry has refused to disburse the last tranche, saying it needed to assess carefully the prospects of loan repayment.