A Greek primary issue by Silvia Merler on 26th February 2015 Bruegel blog On the 25th February, the Greek ministry of finance published the final data for the execution of the State Budget in January 2015.
This data is available at monthly frequency and on cash basis, which makes it well suited to assess the situation of public finances from a short term financing perspective. Moreover, it allows comparing actual outcomes with expected ones. [...] According to the Ministry of Finance, the underperformance in January 2015 was mainly due to the extension of a VAT payment deadline until the end of February 2015 and to the underperformance of the expected revenues from the settlement of arrears. Therefore, data released in February will be key to watch, for two reasons. First, it has been previously been pointed out that March is one of the heaviest months for Greece in terms of financing needs, with 4.3bn of T-bills to roll over and 1.5 bn coming due to the IMF. After last Friday’s agreement, which includes the returning of the 11bn left over in the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) to the EFSF, the short term funding options for the Greek government have narrowed. Second, it might be an important indicator for the negotiations over the target primary surplus for 2015, which is still not set. According to the European Commission forecasts released this month, the primary surplus in 2014 was expected to be 1.7% on an accrual basis, although the weaker end-2014 data suggest the actual figure might be lower. 1.7% is not far from the 1.5% target that Syriza would like the Eurogroup to agree to for 2015. Leaving aside the political considerations on this, budget data show that revenues in January 2015 were 17% lower than they were in January 2014, suggesting that if this trend does not revert, even 1.5% primary surplus may be hard to achieve. full: http://www.bruegel.org/nc/blog/detail/article/1583-a-greek-primary-issue/ further references: Hellenic Republic - Ministry of Finance, State Budget Execution for January of 2015 http://www.minfin.gr/?q=en/content/state-budget-execution-january-2015-0 and http://www.minfin.gr/sites/default/files/Bulletin_1_2015.pdf _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
