Friday, November 21, 2014

Greece Submits Budget With Troika Talks Still at Impasse

by Marcus Bensasson and Christos Ziotis

Bloomberg

November 21, 2014

Greece submitted its 2015 budget to parliament without prior sign-off from its international creditors as talks with them remained stalled.

The plan sees the government posting a budget surplus before interest payments of 3 percent of gross domestic product next year, or 5.6 billion euros ($7 billion) compared with a forecast of 2.9 percent of GDP in an earlier draft of the budget last month, Alternate Finance Minister Christos Staikouras told reporters in Athens today. Hours earlier, talks between the government and officials representing the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, known as the troika, ended without an agreement over those forecasts.

“The risk of a complete breakdown is quite high,” said Aristides Hatzis, an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “This is a pre-electoral message. There’s a competition going on between the government and Syriza over who can unshackle Greece from the bailout accord the quickest.”

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