The Minister of Finances Giannis Stournaras is currently in Paris for the OECD forum and a number of official meetings. Yesterday Mr. Stournaras met with the OECD’s General Secretary Angel Gurria and Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter, while today he is scheduled to see his French counterpart Pierre Moscovici. On Friday he will meet the Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem in Athens.
When confronted with the OECD report that indicated a 4.8% GDP recession for 2013 and a further 1.3% GDP recession in 2014 (compared to Greek estimations of a 0.6% growth), the Minister disagreed with the divs, as they even contradict European Commission and IMF predictions. Mr. Stournaras expects that growth with be “just bellow 1% of GDP”. The OECD’s estimation is based on the prediction that Greece will need further IMF/EU funding in order to cover the “void” that recession in 2014 will create.
Furthermore, the Minister of Finances also revealed to Reuters that Greece intends to go through with a “small” bond issue in the first half of 2014. Mr. Stournaras explained that “Interest payments have fallen a lot, a lot of amortization was pushed to the future, so (the bond issue) is going to be small”.
