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Greece had committed to maintain fiscal balance during the interim period, take immediate reforms to fight tax evasion and corruption, and measures to deal with what Athens calls its “humanitarian crisis” and kick-start economic growth, he said.

In the document seen by Reuters, Greece pledged to meet its financial obligations to all creditors, recognise the existing EU/IMF programme as the legally binding framework and refrain from unilateral action that would undermine the fiscal targets.

Crucially, it accepted that the extension would be monitored by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, a climbdown by Tsipras who had vowed to end cooperation with “troika” inspectors accused of inflicting deep economic and social damage on Greece.

However, the document stopped short of accepting that Greece should achieve this year a surplus on the primary budget – which excludes repayments on Greece’s huge debts – equal to three percent of the country’s annual economic output, as promised under the bailout deal.

Tsipras wants to cut that to 1.5 percent to allow more state spending to ease the plight of the Greek people, while the document left the issue open by speaking of attaining “appropriate primary budget surpluses”.

The six-month interim period would be used to negotiate a long-term deal for recovery and growth incorporating further debt relief measures promised by the Eurogroup in 2012.

via Reuters

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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