Galery

1

Victoria Mindova

The draft budget for 2010 has been officially submitted for voting in the parliament. Possibilities for changes still exists since Greece’s way out of the crisis requires financial flexibility and adequacy, which “may include some budget alterations in the future” said Georgeos Papakonstantinou, the Minister of Finance.

The financial plan for 2010 is mostly aiming at reducing state deficit with 3.6%, or €8.4b of the GDP for 2010. In order to bring the deficit to the desired 9.1% of GDP in a year, the government has prepared measures including changes in the legal framework of taxation and reformations in the government-administrative policy responsible for expenses reduction. The expected inflow in the state treasury during the next year is expected to be €4.5b, or 1.8% of GDP, €3.5b of which will be yielded from tax-optimization, said Papakonstantinou. The health-care reformations are expected to save the state €3.7b, or 1.5% of GDP.  

After the implementation of budget 2010, the new government is planning for revision of the organization, the management and the control of the statistical institute, guaranteeing independent data and objective information. Papakonstantinou has announced that changes in the education and public security systems are about to take place. Regarding the social security reformations, the minister announced that the final draft of the new project will be submitted for voting during March 2010 and will elaborate on the restructuring, closing or merging of the social-security institutes.