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Greece will receive the disputed fifth tranche of the financial support under the Memorandum signed with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. The good news came with the announcement of the findings of yet another mission of supervisors in Greece, which this time lasted unusually long. More than a month the staff of the three institutions analyzed the progress of the Greek government in implementing the recovery program, which recently began to fail in the hands of George Papandreou’s government.

Despite the apparent delays, the Troika decided to give another chance to the Greek socialist government and to pay 12 billion euros in mid-summer. The money will come just in time before investors start knocking on the Greek door to repay its loans in foreign credits. The recognition which the Minister of Finance Georgios Papakonstantinou made a few days ago that Greece has money only to the end of July before becoming insolvent stirred the public spirits, but helped the public understand the importance of the financial support and the need of reforms.

According to the report of the Troika, albeit belatedly, the Government has committed to seriously cut the public sector, to considerably reduce the employment in public administration, to restructure or close down public enterprises, protecting the interests of the most vulnerable social groups at the same time. The revenue side of the medium-term program will give greater importance to the minimization of tax incentives, taxation of real estate and combating tax evasion. The good news is that increasing VAT and income taxes for individuals and companies is not mentioned.

The Troika stated that the government has pledged to significantly speed up the privatization process, which should bring 50 billion euros net to the Greeks in the next five years. The actual privatization should have been begun “yesterday”, but the government’s fear of violent reactions by the union forces inside and outside PASOK made it postpone the inevitable. To speed up the process, the experts from the International Monetary Fund and the European institutions say that an independently controlled privatization agency will be set up that will determine the list of state assets and update the program every three months according to the circumstances and the annual targets set.

It is said in the report of the Troika that liquidity in the financial sector is still low, but the necessary policies are introduced to ensure adequate capital liquidity of the banking system.  The expert assessment is that the banking sector is relatively stable. Banks follow the recommendations of the mission and strengthen their capital, giving advantage to the market-based solutions from the private sector. However, the Troika did not fail to note in its report that even if a bank faces serious problems with lending, it could rely on the Financial Stability Facility, which avails the necessary funds for possible support.

There are notes of encouragement in the paragraph on structural reforms, where the changes in health, public administration, labour market and transport are marked as positive. However, the mission of the IMF and Europe emphasizes that the new policies should be improved but most importantly to begin to be applied strictly so as to give results. It is reported that the recession in the field of economic development was higher than planned last year but Greece could make up for in 2011 by supporting the tourism sector and removing all administrative and technical barriers to exports, which jumped due to the insufficient local market.

Meanwhile, it became clear that the meeting of the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, with the President of the council of finance ministers Jean-Claude Juncker was successful. The two men had agreed that Greece would get the second inflow of funds for the period 2012-2013, without giving further details. The situation with the additional funding is expected to get clear in the coming weeks, but for the moment the most important news for the Greek media is the payment of the fifth tranche of the financial support.

The Greek economic newspaper Naftemporiki announced the news with the controversial headline "The Troika: The fifth dose possibly in July." The obvious precaution of Greek economic observers proved completely understandable at a time when a new greater wave of social unrest rises in the country as well as political response that shows that the Greeks are not ready for additional measures. Ethnos newspaper title page contains the recommendations of the supervisors: "The Troika: speed up the structural reforms. Reduce the state. The fifth dose in July." The title of Vima is similar and reads: "Reduce the state, increase the taxes, privatize."