IMF rejects report about Greece missing targets
The Internationanal Monetary Fund on Sunday dismissed reports that a team of inspectors from the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank had found that Greece has missed all its fiscal targets.
“Recent media reports claiming knowledge of the findings of the review mission are untrue,» an IMF spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement to Reuters news agency.
“Our discussions with the authorities continue, are making good progress and are expected to conclude soon,» she said.
Der Spiegel reported that the quarterly report by the troika would blame disproportionately high government spending and inadequate tax collection for a ballooning Greek budget deficit.
It said the European Union was holding back the next tranche of international credit.
A senior ECB official, chief economist Juergen Stark, meanwhile, pressed Athens to privatize state-owned assets faster, in an interview with the German weekly Welt am Sonntag.
?One should be more ambitious, so as to reduce the debt level by 20 per cent,? said Stark.
