Greece: Budget surplus!

[Bleipriester]

The first seven months of 2013 brought a budget surplus of 2,6 billion Euros for Greece. Interest is excluded, the country did not released the number with interest to the public. It´s nevertheless a good message, because a new borrowing worth 3,1 billion EUR was expected.
Greece´s economy is still rapidly shrinking. The first quarter it shrank by 5,6 %, the second quarter by 4,6 %.
Despite the good news, the magazine Der Spiegel wrote, that the German central bank expects that a new "rescue package" will be necessary but the bank did not comment that yet.

Greece's Fiscal Discipline Starts to Pay Off - WSJ.com

 

[waltky]

Granny takin' her money outta dat Grecian urn company...

Greece will need third aid package, Schaeuble admits
21 August 2013 > GERMANY'S finance minister has admitted for the first time that Greece will need a third aid package, in a move that will pile pressure on the EU to help Ireland leave its bailout later this year.

"There will have to be another programme in Greece," Wolfgang Schaeuble told an election campaign audience in northern Germany yesterday, in comments that raised the prospect of a step that could be deeply unpopular domestically just five weeks before national elections. The prospect of a third bailout for Greece will place even greater pressure on the EU to help Ireland successfully exit its bailout programme at the end of the year. The EU needs at least one of the bailout countries to prove the bailout programme "works". Ireland is considered the only country with a realistic prospect of doing so.

In Athens, a Greek finance ministry official said a new bailout would focus on plugging an expected funding shortfall over 2014-2016. "Greece and its lenders are examining several ways to plug any funding gap that Greece will face over the next few years," the official said on condition of anonymity. The measures included using leftover funds from a bank bailout programme and previously discussed debt support measures, the official said. In Frankfurt, the European Central Bank said executive board member Joerg Asmussen would visit Greece today to discuss progress on reforms needed to ensure more bailout money.

Schaeuble's comments go beyond any utterances from Chancellor Angela Merkel, tipped to win a third term in the September 22 election, who has taken a more cautious line on Greece to avoid angering voters who fear they will have to foot the bill for Athens. Schaeuble has said in the past that international lenders may have to consider a new aid programme for Greece after the existing one runs out at the end of 2014, but he has never described this as inevitable, as he appeared to do yesterday. He added that there would be no further debt haircut for Athens. Greece got an aid tranche of €5.8bn from its international lenders – the euro area, its national central banks and the International Monetary Fund – in July and stands to receive another €1bn in October, subject to implementation of further reforms.

SAVINGS

The troika will return in Athens in the autumn to find out whether the government needs to find further savings to meet its 2015-2016 budget targets. Progress on reform in the recession-stricken country has been patchy and there have been several reports that Greece may need another aid package or more debt relief to get back to a more sustainable financial position. Earlier this month, the German government, one of Greece's biggest creditors, dismissed a report by that said Europe "will certainly agree a new aid programme for Greece" and that the existing aid package carried "extremely high" risks. As Europe's biggest economy, Germany takes the biggest share of bailouts which are unpopular with taxpayers.

Greece will need third aid package, Schaeuble admits - Independent.ie