IMF Reports Greece Has Made Progress Warns about Tax Evasion

Debt-laden Greece has made progress in improving its finances, but the country must do more to fight tax evasion, the International Monetary Fund has said.

In a report, the IMF said Greece had made “exceptional” progress on reducing its budget deficit since 2010.

But the IMF, one of the lenders that backed a bailout of Greece, said the “notorious” problem of tax evasion was still a major issue.

Also, Athens was still too slow to cut public sector jobs, the IMF said.

Cutting the budget deficit and making its economy more competitive were key conditions of the 240bn-euro (£202bn) bailout from the European Union and the IMF.

“Progress on fiscal adjustment has been exceptional by any international comparison,” the IMF said in its report, which followed a visit by officials to the country.

“Greece has also made a significant dent in its competitiveness gap,” the report said.

But the IMF added that “insufficient” structural reforms have meant that deficit cutting has been achieved primarily through cutting jobs and salaries bringing “unequal distribution of the burden of adjustment”.

The IMF also said that “very little” had been done to tackle Greece’s “notorious tax evasion,” with the rich and self-employed “simply not paying their fair share” as austerity unfairly hits mostly public sector workers earning a salary or a pension.

via BBC

This article is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Corporation or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. Leveraged trading is high risk and not suitable for all. You could lose all of your deposited funds.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza