August 08, 2010
While major challenges lie ahead, the program is off to a strong start and progress has been made, stated Poul Thomsen who is in charge of the IMF team, to Kathimerini.
How would you evaluate Greece’s progress, three months after the signing of the memorandum?
Greece has done well--the program has started very strongly. You will recall that, from the outset, Greece faced two fundamental problems: a high fiscal deficit—which threatened its access to capital markets; and a lack of competitiveness—which threatened the country’s future growth and development. There has been significant progress on both these fronts. In the short term, emphasis has been rightly given to the urgent issue of fiscal adjustment. Here, while there have been some difficulties containing the expenditures of local government organizations, the government has exceeded expectations at a national level. As a result, the overall deficit target for the end of June was met.
Challenges and risks remain, of course. But in this first phase of the program, it can be said that there has been encouraging progress on the deficit issue. While maintaining this momentum, the next phase of the program will need to place even greater emphasis on the structural reforms needed to promote growth, competitiveness and jobs—and to ensure that the program is socially fair and balanced, which has been a major objective from the beginning.
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