The IMF on Wednesday again touched on Greek program and the country’s fragile economy, saying it foresees that a primary budget surplus of 3.3 percent will be posted for 2016 – a figure higher by three percentage points than previously forecast.
Along those lines, the Fund also revised, upwards, primary budget surplus forecasts for the 2017-2019 period, although it continued to insist that a creditor-mandated target of 3.5 percent for 2018 (as a percentage of annual GDP) will not be achieved.
Along those lines, the IMF – days before the Fund’s annual spring meetings in Washington D.C. – said the primary budget surplus for 2019-2021 will not exceed 1.5 percent of GDP on an annual basis.
Additionally, the Fund forecasts that the country’s debt load, as a percentage of GDP, will gradually ease, after first reaching a peak in 2018. Revenues collected by the general government are also predicted to drop, as a percentage of GDP, for the period including 2020 and a brief time thereafter.
Meanwhile, in a related development, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras chaired a meeting of top ministers on Wednesday, ahead of the IMF’s spring meetings on Friday and Saturday .
The leftist Greek government is expected to be represented in Washington by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, Alternate FinMin Giorgos Chouliarakis and Economy Dimitri Papadimitriou.
According to reports out of the Greek capital this week, the Tsipras government aims to keep a “low-profile” in Washington, avoiding any hint of tabling new demands or publicly airing disagreements.
Sources that spoke to “N” said the goal is to avoid providing any pretense for further delays in negotiations to finally conclude the second review of the Greek program. As such, the Greek side assume a role of “observer” in developments and in the continuing negotiations between Germany, the IMF and the Commission over the Greek bailout program.
The latest “unofficial deadline” to conclude the second review is a May 22 Eurogroup meeting.
The “marching orders” for the trio of Greek ministers headed to Washington was reportedly given by Tsipras himself.
The short-term strategy on the part of the beleaguered Greek coalition government, in the face of shrill opoosition and public opinion criticism, is to avoid pitfalls ahead of a tabling of the latest round of austerity measures in Parliament – and, of course, to get the draft bills passed by the slim coalition majority of MPs (153 out of 300 deputies).
The second stage of this strategy, according to the same sources, is to persuade coalition MPs and SYRIZA party cadres to ignore the very negative opinion poll results bedeviling the government, while convincing them that there is enough time to improve the government’s and ruling party’s image.
