ATHENS: Greece's troubles in enforcing a tight austerity plan in return for EU-IMF bailout loans will be discussed in talks with the country's creditors next week, the Greek finance minister said Thursday.
"It is evident that we will be discussing the macroeconomic data of the first eight months of 2011 and the country's fiscal record will clearly be evaluated on the basis of this data," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said in a statement.
Venizelos was reacting to Greek media reports on Thursday claiming that Athens was seeking to "renegotiate" the timetable and goals of Greece's arduous recovery plan that has plunged the country into recession.
EU and International Monetary Fund experts are currently conducting a regular audit of Greece's finances to determine whether it will receive next month a sixth tranche of funds under its May 2010 bailout accord.
Venizelos has pledged to speed up fiscal efforts by the end of the year.
But a worse-than-calculated contraction in the economy, along with difficulties faced by Greek tax authorities to secure cash, have bedevilled the government's drive to trim the runaway public deficit.
The finance ministry this week released figures showing that among Greece's 34 leading tax district offices, most staffers had completed less than one audit of state debtors in June while there are over 360,000 pending cases nationwide.
Six months into the year, the public deficit has risen to 14.69 billion euros ($21 billion) according to the finance ministry.
Under the May 2010 deal with the European Union and the IMF which gave Greece a 110-billion-euro ($159-billion) lifeline, the deficit cannot be higher than 16.68 billion euros or 7.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product for all 2011.
The government has already admitted that the economy will shrink at a faster rate in 2011 than the 3.5-percent calculation agreed between EU, IMF and Greek officials earlier this year.
Last year, the government managed to reduce the deficit by over five points to 10.5 percent of GDP but missed its original targets because of a deeper-than-expected recession.
On Friday, official data showed the Greek economy shrinking even faster as tough austerity measures started to really bite, shrinking 6.9 percent year-on-year in the second quarter after 5.5 percent in the first.
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