Greece in for worse recession: Minister

“The [recovery] program is in fact off-track in certain areas,” Stournaras told reporters on Thursday.

He made the comments after a meeting with debt inspectors from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – known as the troika – in Athens.

The group is in Greece to monitor the country’s finances and to make sure Athens has lived up to its economic-reform commitments.

Greece has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its fifth year of recession because of the government-introduced harsh austerity measures.

The measures have left about half a million people without jobs over the past years while Athens has continuously struggled to meet the fiscal targets in its rescue loan agreements.

This is while Greek’s new coalition government has promised to “create the conditions to take the country out of the crisis for good and out of dependence on loan agreements in the future.”

One in every five Greek workers is currently unemployed, banks are in a shaky position, and pensions and salaries have been slashed by up to 40 percent.

The long-drawn-out eurozone debt crisis, which began in Greece in late 2009 and reached Italy, Spain, and France last year, is viewed as a threat not only to Europe but also to many of the world’s other more developed economies.

TNP/SS

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