Greece Vows Not to Slash Pensions

January 5, 2016 Share Print 0

Greece has promised not to implement controversial cuts to pensions, putting the indebted nation on a collision course with creditors months into a new bail-out programme.

Athens’ left-wing Syriza government said it would not slash expenditure on its main and supplementary pensions as part of a reform plan submitted to international lenders on Monday night.

The reforms have been demanded by lenders in return for the latest release of bail-out cash.

But pensions spending has proven to be the main sticking point for Greece and its Troika of creditors – the European Commision, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund – during nearly a year of tortuous negotiations.

The IMF has pushed hardest for bold cuts to the govenment’s pensions outlay, leading to Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras demanding that the Fund take no further part in the country’s bail-out deal.

Greeks have seen a 40pc fall in their pension provision over the last five years – a shrinkage that has been ruled unconstitutional by the country’s highest administrative court.

via Telegraph

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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.