periothiko.blogspot.com
According to the data of the Audit Court in Greece, public sector debts to third parties amount to 8.29 billion euros. Social insurance funds, hospitals, municipalities and legal entities ran into debts to various creditors, suppliers and other partners with a total of 7.67 billion euros in January-November 2010. The other 620.5 million euros are overdue payments of central ministries and their peripheral branches.
Public hospitals are up to the ears in debt with 6.52 billion euros. The manner of payment of 5.34 billion euros of them was renegotiated on conditions more favourable for the country but the suppliers would still get paid. Social security funds debt equals 660 million euros and local government organizations debts are 356.2 million euros. State enterprises most of which were identified as inefficient and showed deficit in 2010 have accumulated debts of 116.2 million euros.
In an attempt to put government finances in order, the competent minister George Papaconstantinou issued ministerial decree in the middle of last year requiring all state institutions to submit monthly reports on revenues and expenditures. Only 967 from the 1061 officially recorded state organizations submitted such reports in August 2010. Only 905 institutions followed the procedure a month later. According to information published in Naftemboriki, Greek municipalities are most disobedient. Only 353 of them submitted the data to the Ministry of Finance in November. This is almost twice less than the local government organizations that submitted reports in June the same year.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance announced the first results of the 2010 budget implementation and boasted for having done the work better than expected. The deficit was reduced by 37% instead of the initial planned 33.2%. It was 30.8 billion euros at the end of 2009 and reached 19.45 billion euros in December 2010, not 20.1 billion euros as was planned at the beginning of the year. Experts commented that the successful results do not give a full picture because they reflect only the budget of close public administration. Data for the wider public sector are not yet complete and the ministry has the fulfillment of the budget for the first ten months of 2010.
Although it seems that the government of George Papandreou fulfilled its objectives to reduce the budget deficit in 2010, the problem of collecting revenue in the Treasury remains. Instead of the planned 6% increase in revenues, the Treasury has reached 5.5% at that with the desperate (as some economists call it) measure of tax amnesty in the second half which brought around 700 million euros by the end of December 2010.
The government has been more successful in costs reductions, mostly by trimming programs for government investment. Spending in the education sector was cut by almost 12% and this also contributed to achieving the objectives of fiscal consolidation in 2010. The goal set in the budget was 9.1% reduction in public spending and the decline has reached 10.9% at the end of the year. This has compensated the gaps in the revenue and saved the government's plan.