Reichenbach’s praise for Stournaras and the General Accounting Office

It’s been some years since a Greek Finance minister spent a few pleasant moments in the discussions with Greek and foreign officials.  Against the strong doubts about the information given by the government to the Troika, leading to even more painful measures, Task Force head Horst Reichenbach praised the General Accounting Office on the quality of the data it collects during his meeting with Yannis Stournaras.

The announcement issued by the Finance ministry after the meeting mentions that "the Task Force recognized that the Finance ministry is doing the best and most reliable monthly monitoring of budget execution throughout Europe."

This assumption, however, deals apparently only with the monitoring system and not the monitoring of implementing the state budget, since it can now be exactly calculated how far off it was in relation to the initial goals. And just yesterday, Stournaras admitted in his speech that the primary budget deficit for this year will be almost 2 billion euros more than what was originally estimated (1.5% instead of 0.5%, as defined in the budget).

Besides the monitoring of the budget execution, the fiscal policy and the plan for combating corruption in the public sector were at the heart of the meeting between the two men, with the participation of deputy minister of Finance Yorgos Mavraganis.