Greece's ruling coalition leaders managed to adopt a new package of austerity measures requested by international financial institutions, which means savings of 11.5 billion euros, and this should International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Commsission and Central European Bank (CEB) officials to recommend further loans.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras managed, Wednesday, to persuade Evangelos Venizelos, PASOK party leader, and Fotis Kouvelis, president of the Democratic Left faction, to sign the agreement after the second round of negotiations this week, Bloomberg informs.
"Reducing public costs by an additional 11.5 billion euros was a precondition for Greece to remain in the eurozone," said Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras.
He added that the package would now be verified by the IMF, the European Commission and ECB joint mission, present in Athens since last week. They will decide on the next funding installment to be granted to Greece.
"Cuts mentioned in the new austerity package refer to years 2013 and 2014, and more than half of the ammount will be saved by a further reduction in wages of public system employees and public system pensions.“
"We should have avoided this new wave of wage and pension cuts, about 6 billion euros worth, which will keep the country in recession in 2013 and 2014," Venizelos said, emphasizing that delaying deadlines for the fiscal targets would have permitted softer austerity measures.
Greece is in its fifth consecutive year of recession and the unemployment rate has reached 22%, pressuring budget state revenues and preventing the government to keep fiscal commitments made to foreign creditors.