Budapest - The Hungarian Finance Minister Janos Veres said on Tuesday that there was no real justification for a recent tumble in the value of the Hungarian forint.

"The weakening of the forint was fundamentally influenced by misinformation over the past few days," Veres said at a meeting with the international press.

The forint was trading at a mid-market rate of 284 to the euro as the minister spoke on Tuesday morning, down from 266 on Friday.

This was the same as its historic low of October 23, when the Hungarian central bank was forced to hike its base rate from 8.5 to 11.5 per cent to prevent speculators driving the currency into the ground.

Veres said that he expects confidence in Hungary's financial policy to be restored following a meeting later in the day with the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF put up the bulk of an emergency 20-billion-euro (27- billion-dollar) standby loan at the end of October as Hungary teetered on the brink of defaulting on its external debt.

The IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was in Budapest on Tuesday for a first quarterly review to check that Hungary is maintaining the fiscal discipline that was a precondition for the IMF-EU-World Bank credit line.

Veres said he was sure the meeting would demonstrate that there was no difference of opinion between the IMF and Hungary, and that confidence on the money markets would be restored. (dpa)