IMF insists on €3bn contingency measures, EC Juncker says “Greece does not need them”

The famous Greece’s projections of the International Monetary Fund. They have been not so ‘successful’ it seems.

IMF’s Projections for Recession/Growth vs Real Life

2010: recession -4% vs Real Life: -5%

2011: recession -2.6% vs Real Life -7.1%

2012: growth 1.1% vs Real Life recession -6.6%

2013: growth 2.1% vs Real Life recession -3.3%

Now the IMF insists on additional austerity of 3 billion euro saying that the European projection of 3.5 Primary Surplus in 2018 was very difficult to achieve.

President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Junker told Greek economic news website Euro2day that

“Greece does not need extra measures ” [contingency measures] – apart from the 5.4 billion euro tailored for Greece by its European lenders for the years 2016-1018. This was not a plan the EC wanted to follow and that it would take it into consideration if wanted by all parts in close cooperation with the Greek government.

Juncker excluded the nominal haircut of the debt and stated that the option for automatic reprofiling [adjusting existing budgets by applying a new profile] will depend on the other points of the Agreement.

The President of the EU Commission admitted an EC official sent an email to the Greek government saying that  passing legislation [ for Income Taxation & Pensions Reform] through the Parliament without the approval of the institutions was an unilateral move and said that he did not approve this email. He added that the Greek government can pass own legislation, however this put a burden of the Review Talks.

Fact is that the IMF and the European lenders still cannot agree on what is right or wrong for Greece, while Greeks are exhausted and are certain that there is no hope for the country to find a way out of this vicious circle.

A wise German journalist told me two days ago: the solution for Greece is that it will pay zero euro to lenders until 2020.

But the lenders want to have their spreadsheets in balance. Everything is pure accounting on the papers.

PS an EC official sends an email that the EC President does not approve. Hm…