ECONOMY

Troika return to Athens due to be agreed at Eurogroup

The date of the troika’s return to Athens is set to be agreed at the meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Monday.

It is expected that the officials from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund will return to Greece very soon and are likely to remain in Athens until the next Eurogroup on March 10.

One of the outstanding issues holding up progress on the latest review of the Greek program, which is the covering of this year’s fiscal gap, appears to have been resolved as a result of Greece heading for a bigger than expected primary surplus for 2013.

“The primary budget surplus is much higher than we had initially estimated … I am telling you now that it exceeds 1.5 billion euros, three times as big as we initially calculated,» Samaras said in an interview published in Sunday’s edition of To Vima,

The Greek side expects the review to now focus more on the structural side, with particular emphasis on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) “tool-kit” of reforms aimed at removing barriers to competition.

The discussion about further debt relief for Greece is not expected to begin until after April 23, when Eurostat is due to confirm the exact size of the 2013 primary surplus.

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