Greece waits to hear EU-IMF verdict
Officials representing Greece’s three creditors – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – known collectively as the troika ? are set to deliver their assessment of the Greek economy on Friday afternoon.
The officials have been in Athens since the beginning of the week for an in-depth assessment of the country?s finances that will determine whether or not Greece receives the fourth 15-billion-euro tranche of a rescue package.
The carried out inspections at several key ministries and sifted through economic data to assess how closely Greece is keeping to the targets it has been set by its creditors.
Sources said that negotiations between the visiting officials and Greek government representatives went on late into Thursday night.
It is thought that the EU-IMF team were seeking guarantees about the implementation of a law that allows private firms to by-pass collective contracts so they can reduce their costs. The inspectors also pressed on the issue of Greece adopting a computerised prescription system to reduce waste in the public health sector.
The third bone of contention was that the Greek state should only give guarantees to banks if they produce plans for relying less on the European Central Bank for capitalization.
