ECONOMY

Ministries reining in spending

Greece’s ministries beat their expenditure targets by 3.4 percent, or 1.2 billion euros, in the first nine months of the year, although in certain cases there was some considerable overspending, according to data released on Monday by Alternate Finance Minister Christos Staikouras.

It was in fact his ministry, along with those of Justice and Labor and the decentralized authorities that spent more than they were supposed to according to the budget. However, “both the number and the rate of digressions from the targets in the first nine months are gradually decreasing,” said Staikouras.

Out of the five authorities that had previously failed to make their targets, two (the Foreign Ministry and Parliament) met their target at the end of September, while two more reduced the distance from their target (the ministries of Justice and Finance).

The Justice Ministry missed its target by 78.1 million euros and the Finance Ministry by 40.1 million, but in both cases it was due to extraordinary payments which had to be made.

The biggest problem was in the seven decentralized authorities, which missed their target by 586.6 million euros.

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