Central bank head confident despite risks
Posters on display in front of Parliament in central Athens call for a nationwide strike tomorrow. Despite worker protests and risks to the government’s efforts to attain its 2010 fiscal goals, the governor of the country’s central bank, Giorgos Provopoulos, said yesterday he is confident Greece will achieve its ‘very ambitious’ deficit-reduction goals and avert further credit-rating downgrades. Rating agencies ‘want evidence that the plan is being implemented on target’ and ‘some time will have to pass before they can form a better judgment,’ Provopoulos, also a European Central Bank governing council member, told Bloomberg. ‘I have full confidence’ in the government meeting its goals, he said. ‘They have to succeed. And they will, I’m sure of that.’
