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Victoria Mindova

The recovery programme of Greece is ‘off-track’, said the representatives of the supervisory Troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission at their first meeting with Greece’s new Minister of Finance Yiannis Stournaras. Their technical staff is expected to precisely determine which the biggest gaps in the programme are and how they could be offset in the coming months.

At a meeting with journalists, he said, "The programme is in fact off-track in certain areas and as planned in others. Three months have passed since the last mission and many things have changed." He stressed that the country has undergone two election campaigns, and now it has no time to lose and needs to take real actions.

"We are going into very deep waters as from today. You will not hear much talk from us because we have many problems to solve. Hard work and hard times are ahead of us. However, I am an optimistic person by nature and I can tell you that I see a light at the end of the tunnel but the tunnel is very long, so we must be patient." About his new colleagues, deputy ministers George Mavraganis and Christos Staykuras, Stournaras said, "I take this very difficult post with two very good specialists. We were working together as economists for a long time and we know each other’s specifics very well."

In the last two and a half years since Greece has come under the influence of institutional lenders of the International Monetary Fund and the European Union journalists, some political circles have been resenting that the supervisory Troika was aware of the status of the Greek economy before the public.

To a provocative question of a journalist, "Do you consider changing the procedure and to first inform the public and parliament about the state of the local economy and then the Troika?" Stournaras answered diplomatically. "The Troika are our collaborators, not occupiers. They represent the creditors that have given a lot of money to Greece in recent years, so we are obliged to cooperate." In conclusion, Stournaras said to reporters that upon leaving after their first meeting, the representatives of the supervisory mission of creditors said to him that he would have a difficult day on Monday during  the Eurogroup meeting .

The talks with the Troika are expected to be hard and the Greek government is trying to pave the way for gaining certain concessions. The black hole in the budget is around two billion euro and it is mainly due to the delay of reforms because of the two election periods. A government source told the Wall Street Journal, that if creditors do not show flexibility, the country could be brought to new elections, because the present requirements of the Troika are too severe for the capabilities of today's government.

Meanwhile, sources from the banking circles stated that since the elections on 17 June, when Greece finally got a democratically elected government and not a caretaker one, bank deposits have increased by five billion euro. The outflow of funds from the domestic banking system in the last three years is estimated at 90 billion euro. Taking office by the new finance minister in Greece failed to calm down the financial markets and the Athens Stock Exchange reported losses on Thursday. It closed with a negative result, its main index closed at 637 basis points with a decline of 2.03% and a turnover of 40.6 million euro. Other European financial markets reported losses too.