“December is the most crucial month since the summer of 2015. The stakes are high in December for progress in the Greek economy and our ability to achieve a road map we announced in the summer of 2015,” Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said on Tuesday.
Speaking in Parliament, during a debate of the 2017 budget, Tsakalotos said December 5th was a landmark date as the Greek economy hoped that the three parts of negotiation will be united (reforms, fiscal targets and debt) at the Eurogroup meeting scheduled for that day.
“There might be another Eurogroup, but very soon we will have a picture on whether we can enter the QE program and when we will move to the abolition of capital controls, since a gradual lifting is currently underway,” the finance minister said.
Tsakalotos said that discussions with the institutions concerning reforms were continuing and noted there were different approaches mostly on how goals will be achieved within the program in 2017 and 2018.
As far as fiscal targets are concerned, discussions are focusing on what will happen after 2018 and “if we will be at 3.5 percent, or the target would fall, or if we keep a 3.5 percent target before lowering it later,” Tsakalotos said. He also reiterated his call to the IMF to begin pressing the “strong player” and not the “weaker player” in the negotiations if it wanted lower budget surpluses for Greece.
Regarding debt negotiations, Tsakalotos said: “I think that by January details will be available, we will know the three pieces, we will know to assess the outlook of the Greek economy in the future.”
Referring to the 2017 budget, Tsakalotos said that essentially it was “mirroring the government policy on taxes and spending. It has positive messages and difficulties, as all budgets do, particularly in the period of crisis.”
The finance minister also noted that there were “people who the government has tried to support and others that were treated unfairly” and stated that the government’s strategy was to lighten the burden from the most vulnerable classes as well as dealing with the issues of tax evasion and smuggling.
Source: ANA-MPA
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