Hardly did the signatures dry on the paper of the €130-billion rescue package and Greece’s lenders come up with new demands. International Monetary Fund report raised the amount to be cut for 2013-2014 from €11 billion to 14 billion euro.
After Greece finally received approval for a second 130bn euro rescue from both the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, the European Commission’s task force has begun making suggestions on how the Hellenic Republic can bring down its deficit.
In its second quarterly report titled “Supporting growth and jobs in Greece”, the task force created last year to lend a helping hand notes that progress has been made on the “fight against tax evasion from high wealth individuals and large corporate taxpayers”. It plans to put a major focus on the issue in coming months with a special emphasis on anti-money laundering tools.
IMF says it very clear:
Corruption has also become a key issue. “Improving the effectiveness, accountability and integrity of public administration is a key priority reform to be implemented in Greece,” it said.IMF-Chief Chirstine Lagarde told ABC that wages in Greece has to reache the levels of Croatia!
Ah, at last! Possitive news! Seems to be a great bargain: 3 billion extra in cutbacks and in exchange the Greek state is going into a coma right now, because there will be elections in 6 to 8 weeks.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2012/cr1257.pdf Ktg, this is the imf’s full report of “as fors” and “where ofs”. It is long if anyone wants to read it. And yet like you say they waited for our government to sign and now THEY are trying to change the agreement. Was it not the eu hierarchy that is afraid that a new Greek government would want to renegotiate the terms of the agreement? So what is this with the imf? Same difference no? 🙁 Btw’ did they change the constitution yet to put the countrys’ gold in jepordy? I can not find out anywhere.
constitution changes ar enot that easy. My link to IMF report doe snot work?
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2012/cr1257.pdf This comes right off the header. Maybe a glich with your server again? I understand and have read your the posts on the time frame it takes to change the consti but the way everything is changeing so fast for us I thought I might have missed it. Thanks
no glitch, also in your link the page loads very slowly, 232 pages in PDF
Link is loding. No problems here in the south. 😉
@Xioti – As far as I am aware the problem is this: the current deal is based on a set of figures that has to be reached in the next couple of years. But even before the Greek government accorded it they were already falling behind. So, the extra measures are there to make sure the agreed goals will be reached.
There are two angles to this. First: the Greek state is indeed again dragging it’s feet and now postponing everything until after the elections. That means that all kind of measures will only be earning money about three months later than expected. Those things have a habit of multiplying. And so we, the taxpayers will have to foot that bill too.
Second: there is so little trust left between Greece and it’s creditors, in this case the IMF, that they resort to a way of budgeting that is plain wrong. They are monitoring now so strict that every deviation of the targets immediately leads to alarm bells going off. And new measures are called for. Instead of giving some leeway for the implementation. But is has to be said that the Greek state has squandered every ounce of trust that there still was. So, it is not totally unreasonable of the IMF. Just that they should be honest and just not give any more loans. Because it is clear they don’t think their Greek counterparts can be trusted.
@AntonisX thanks for your explanation I agree 100% with your first point and it might be something outrageous to anyone outside of Greece but to us dragging of the feet to us is like breathing, your second point 50-50 I personally think we should never gotten involved with imf. Thanks again for answering. 😉
@Xiotie – That was no explenation, it was an opinion! 😯
But glad you agree with the first point. And yes, I agree with you that Greece should have never gotten in bed with the IMF. But that seems to be the price we are paying for a wild gamble of GAP, when he threatened Merkel to do just that if she wasn’t willing to bail him out and she took him up on it. And fair is fair, most EU-countries wouldn’t have agreed to MoU-mkI because their population did not trust Greece nor Brussels. And right they were. But they seem to trust the IMF. And how wrong they were.
Thomson just admitted in Washington that he made a big mistake of not going after the Greek government in earnest the first two years. That’s so true, but also such a admission of total failure from the side of the IMF that I don’t know why he still is in his position.
Good points, Antonis! Indeed, it’s a major problem that the IMF/EU plans need to be adjusted to the specific situation of Greece, but that there is a both a lack of trust in the Greek government as well as a lack of good officials willing to put hard work into preparing proposals of their own. Looks like this is different in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, where the governments enjoy more leeway because they showed a committment to deliver results. The lukewarm lip services of the Greeks, on the other hand, don’t impress anyone in the IMF or EU.
Sadly, it doesn’t look as if the elections will change that. Either it’s an ND government once again, full of politicians of the old guard who drove the country into this mess, or a left wing coalition that will be handicapped by infighting and a lack of serious, realistical plans for a recovery. What the nation needs now is a larger-than-life democratic leader who manages to unite a majority of people behind a reasonable program for modernisation. I can’t see anyone on the political stage now who fits that description, but maybe the campaign with change that. I can only hope so.
Thanks Gray. I agree with your point about the leeway of the other countries. It is something the Greek nomenklatura has frittered away totally And guess who is paying that bill again?
About the EU/IMF not falling for the tricks: Thomson just admitted that he did fall for it. And the EU-politicians have time and again shown to not understand or know at all how things were done The Greek Way.
And about the future: sad to say that I agree with you on that one.
Corruption has also become a key issue I WILL SAY EVERY DAY I COME ACROSS A SMART DUDE BEHIND A COUNTER WHO WILL ASK ME THE DUMBEST QUESTION AFTER I HAVE PURCHASED FROM HIS SHOP”WHAT U WAITING FOR A PLASTIC BAG” NO U TWAT THE RECEIPT SO THAT I CAN DO THE CORRECT THING.
CORRUPTION IS A HOUSE HOLD NAME IN GREECE.
According to Horst Reichenbach, “Some things are moving but other things are not moving. In particular, the audit of the rich taxpayers isn’t making the same degree of progress as other areas. Clearly there is an unwillingness to decisively tackle these matters.”
Assuming Reichenbach is not making any misjudgement here, you might have quite a ticking bomb in your hands. All in all, it’s rather interesting to see how this issue will eventually unfold.
Reichenbach’s quote is taken from: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/03/17/greeks-face-challenges-to-implement-reform-warns-commission/