New York Times
February 11, 2011
Officials with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund recommended on Friday that Greece receive its fourth round of bailout financing, but warned that the government still had a lot of work ahead.
The officials said that Greece was broadly on track with an economic recovery program but that it must push through unpopular structural changes and commit to large-scale privatization if it is to emerge from its debt crisis. Still, they said that they would recommend the release next month of another 15 billion euros, or $20.3 billion.
“There have been some delays and shortfalls, but this should not detract from the fact that this very ambitious program is broadly on track,” Poul M. Thomsen, the head of the I.M.F.’s mission to Greece, said in Athens.
Mr. Thomsen added that he was confident the money would be disbursed in March, and he noted that the government’s ability to trim the budget deficit to 9.5 percent of gross domestic product from 15.5 percent last year “was impressive by any international standards.”
But more must be done, he said, if Greece was to reach the “critical mass” needed to reduce the deficit to 7.4 percent of G.D.P. by the end of the year.
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