The Minister of Finances Gikas Hardouvelis will be meeting with the troika’s Poul Thomsen (IMF), Declan Costello (European Commission) and Klaus Masuch (ECB) today at 4:30pm. The short meeting has been planned to evaluate the execution of the budget and the progress of reforms.
The troika representatives are also expecting explanations from Mr. Hardouvelis regarding the 600-million-euro gap in the budget caused by a judicial decision vindicating uniformed officers earlier in the year. Mr. Hardouvelis on the other hand will try to get the go-ahead for increasing the number of installments for tax and insurance debts from 48 to 100.
Tax cuts to come in the “post-troika” era
While the Finance Minister’s speech on Tuesday at the Economist’s conference in Athens spoke of gradual changes in tax policy and administration, an unnamed ministerial officer insisted than any such changes would take place in the “post-troika” era. Therefore the rumored reduction of the tax on oil or the emergency solidarity contribution will be revised after talks with the troika regarding the debt start in autumn.
At present, Mr. Hardouvelis’ main priority is to focus on the set of milestones for the second one-billion-euro loan installment. At present Greece’s compliance rate is about 20% and a lot needs to be done by mid August. The Minister met with his Deputy Christos Staikouras, his predecessor and current Governor of the Bank of Greece Yannis Stournaras and the new General Secretary of Fiscal Policy Manolis Mamatzakis. The more critical matters on the Minister’s agenda are the deregulation of collective dismissals and legislating on lock outs.
