Brussels, 24/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 23 March, the Greek authorities issued a new charge against the IMF, which is calling for additional budgetary cuts in the framework of the monitoring mission of the institutional creditors of Athens.
The representatives of the IMF are “responsible” for the delays in the negotiations, “because they want to get us off the edge of the cliff”, said the Secretary General for Budgetary Policy at the Greek Finance Ministry, Fragiskos Koutentakis, the Greek daily newspaper Ekathimerini reported on its English-language website, on Wednesday 23 March. He accuses the IMF of “maintaining uncertainty” over the completion of the first monitoring mission of the third bailout plan to Greece. He went on to say that “we keep telling them that uncertainty costs the real economy dearly, but they pretend they do not understand and issue recommendations about which expenditures should be cut”.
Koutentakis also criticised the “inaccuracies” of the international financial organisation. Whereas according to the IMF, the Greek budget recorded a primary deficit of 0.6% of GDP, the Greek government has provided evidence of the primary budgetary surplus (not including servicing of the debt) of 0.2%. “They challenge our figures without explaining how they calculate theirs”, Koutentakis said.
Under the third Greek bailout plan, Athens is supposed to achieve a primary budgetary surplus of 3.5% in 2018 in accordance with the following trajectory: -0.25% in 2015, 0.5% in 2016, 1.75% in 2017 and 3.5% in 2018.
On the same day, the Greek Finance Ministry announced a higher primary surplus than anticipated, exceeding €3 billion in January and February, or €1 billion more than the target laid down. Despite lower fiscal income, the extra came from dividends paid out by the Bank of Greece, subsidies from the European Union and lower budgetary expenditure.
The Commissioner for the Euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, said that sticking to the budgetary targets of the third financial bailout plan and the management of the migration crisis were two separate things. “We recognise that the Greek government is facing serious challenges in providing assistance for dealing with the refugee crisis, but as regards programme negotiations, once again the programme conditionality (for the granting of aid) is set”, he said on Wednesday in an interview with the news agency Bloomberg. In early March, the Greek finance minister, Euclid Tsakalatos, told the European Parliament that he felt that it was impossible not to take account of the migration and humanitarian crisis facing Greece in negotiations on the budgetary efforts and structural measures to be taken by Athens to comply with its commitments (see EUROPE 11503).
Greece is making efforts rapidly to concretise the 'return of migrants to Turkey' plank of the EU/Turkey agreement on migration (see other article). The Commission has put the cost of these operations at nearly €300 million, to be paid for entirely by the EU.
The negotiations between Athens and its institutional creditors, which resumed following the meeting of the finance ministers of Monday 7 March, were interrupted last weekend (see EUROPE 11506). According to the president of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, progress has been made on income tax and pensions reform. The representatives of the 'institutions' (Commission, ECB, IMF and ESM) are expected to return to Athens on Monday 4 April. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)