Greece To Explain Budget Shortfall to Troika

Greece’s international creditors are due to meet the country’s finance minister Tuesday for talks over the country’s bailout program and the holes in its budget, discussions which are central to the government receiving more aid.

Inspectors from the European Union, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) are due to meet with Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras on Tuesday morning.

There were doubts that the meeting would take place after differences over how to plug Greece’s funding gap emerged last week but, on the eve of the visit on Monday, the country’s prime minister appeared resolute that the differences could be resolved.

Trying to quell public fears over the return of the creditors, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told the nation via a Greek television broadcast that the country was not “at war” with international lenders.

“First of all let me say something – let’s do away with this notion that we are in some kind of war…It is a negotiation.”

He argued that it was possible to close Greece’s fiscal gap in 2014 and achieve its goal of a primary surplus without more austerity – austerity which he said the country could and would not take.

via CNBC/a>

Content 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 Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

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