ATHENS: Greece’s Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said that the negotiations with Greece’s creditors are continuing and the government presents a program that would allow a primary budget surplus of 1.5 percent of its 2015 economic output.
Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is holding a cabinet meeting as Greece officials and creditors in Brussels to discuss proposed overhauls for the country to secure more funds from the euro area and stave off fiscal collapse. Greece has red lines and won’t agree to any “recessionary measures” such as cutting wages or pensions or allowing mass layoffs, Tsipras told Real News newspaper of Athens this weekend.
The proposed reforms will bring in €3 billion of additional revenue this year and enable the economy to grow 1.4 percent in 2015, said a Greece government official. Creditors agreed to extend Greece’s bailout program until June in return for commitments such as creating a new culture of tax compliance.
Talks between Greek officials and the so-called Brussels Group, which started yesterday and have continued on Sunday, are cooperative, detailed and meaningful, a Greek government official said on condition of anonymity as the discussions are private. Both sides agreed in principle that policies should shift the burden from lower income groups to higher earners, the official said.
