CityAM.com — Greece recorded a budget surplus of €2.4bn in the first four months of 2016.
The surplus in Greece’s central government primary budget exceeded its own target of around €500m off the back of lower spending by administration.
Spending was more than €2bn below target while tax revenues better than expected, coming in at €14.1bn between January and April, two per cent higher than forecasts.
The figures do not include debt servicing costs and are slightly different from those monitored by the Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of Greece’s €86bn bailout package.
Greece 2016
| GDP growth | minus 0.3 per cent |
| Unemployment rate | 24.7 per cent |
| Inflation rate | minus 0.3 per cent |
| Gross public debt | 182.8 per cent of GDP |
Source: European Commission, May 2016
As part of the deal, Greece is required to run a 3.5 per cent budget surplus by 2018, though there is wrangling among the troika – the IMF, the Eurozone and the European Central Bank (ECB) – over whether such a target is too harsh.
The IMF has advocated a loosening of the terms agreed during last summer’s bailout saga, which saw Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras hold a referendum on an early draft of the deal.
The Fund wants Greece to be given repayment holidays and a stretching of the loan maturities which could result in Greece paying back debt until 2080.
The Eurozone, however, would like a harder line both to show other members, such as Spain and Portugal, that budget rules cannot be disregarded without punishments.
