Greek Budget Deficit Revised to 13.6%, May Top 14%, EU Says By Andrew Davis
April 22 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union said Greece’s budget deficit last year was worse than it previously forecast and could top 14 percent of gross domestic product as “off- market swaps” cloud its estimates. The EU’s statistics office said today Greece’s deficit was 13.6 percent last year, higher than the government’s April 7 forecast of 12.9 percent. The EU forecast a shortfall of 12.7 percent in November. Ireland overtook Greece as the EU nation with the largest deficit, with its deficit revised up to 14.3 percent, the Luxembourg-based Eurostat said. Greek bond yields have surged to the highest in more than a decade on concern that the nation’s surging budget deficit will leave the country struggling to finance its debt. The EU along with the International Monetary Fund has offered the country an aid package worth as much as 45 billion euros. Eurostat also said “uncertainties” about the quality of the Greek deficit data made a further revision of between 0.3 percentage point and 0.5 percentage point possible. “Eurostat is expressing a reservation on the quality of the data reported by Greece, due to uncertainties on the surplus of social security funds for 2009, on the classification of some public entities and on the recording of off-market swaps,” the report said. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=George+Papandreou&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>has raised taxes and cut spending and wages to bring the shortfall down to 8.7 percent of GDP this year and has pledged to make further deficit cuts to bring the gap within the EU’s 3 percent limit by the end of 2012. Greece’s benchmark 10-year bond yield<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=GGGB10YR%3AIND>rose to 8.13 percent today, the highest since 1998 and more than twice the comparable German rate. -- Best Regards, Jay Shah, FRM "Expect The Unexpected" Blog: http://fuzylogix.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""GLOBAL SPECULATORS"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalspeculators?hl=en.
