A disputed hole in the 2014 budget – which the government puts at one billion euros while international lenders said it could be as much as 2.5 billion – can be filled without resorting to more austerity measures, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said, promising there wouldn’t be any more pay or pension cuts.
Speaking on private television channel Mega, Stournaras said that the 2014 budget, which is to be voted on in Parliament on Dec. 8, just before Eurozone finance chiefs meet in Brussels for an agenda that includes talking about the long-delayed reforms in Greece and a pending one billion euro loan installment – can cover the gap.
“We have submitted a budget with a specific goal and we are submitting proposals for achieving that goal in the best possible way,” Stournaras said, adding that he was confident that envoys from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) are way off track with their dire predictions.
Although virtually all previous rosy government estimates were wrong, he said that, “We do not accept that there is a gap. The issue is about finding the right measures to achieve our goals. “The term fiscal gap changes from day to day. For example, we sent (the Troika) data including this October, which were much better than we and the Troika expected. We are looking for around 1 billion euros,” Stournaras added, trying to explain why there isn’t any gap and why there is, but that it’s so small it doesn’t matter.
He said despite talk earlier this fall that Greece, which is surviving on two bailouts of 240 billion euros ($325 billion) won’t need a third one, even if smaller, that there’ s no need for additional loans or a third memorandum.
“We do not need a new loan because I believe that we will have the money we need under the existing program, which runs through 2016. What do we need another memorandum for? We would happily sign one if they gave us a loan with 2.5 percent interest, because we couldn’t get 2.5 percent from the markets right now,” he said.
Greece has raised the prospect of asking the Troika for debt relief if it shows a primary surplus, although the government has denied the same for Greeks crushed by austerity as banks demand full repayment in most cases. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has set aside a bill to help households repay with more manageable terms although he’s hoping for the same from the Troika.
Stournaras said that the government hopes to reach a deal with the troika by the end of the year on the fiscal gap and a number of other contentious issues, including the “prior actions” Athens needs to fulfill in order to receive the next tranche of bailout funding, before Greece assumes the rotating European Union presidency on January 1.
He said that the discussion on a possible reduction of Greece’s debt will begin after the European statistics agency, Eurostat, publishes its official data on the Greek economy and on the anticipated primary surplus. “We want the discussion to start now,” Stournaras said, adding that amaras is against a Eurogroup proposal for the issue to be put off until after EU Parliamentary elections in May.
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