Troika will reveal its intentions this Friday

They are cutting the last revenue source of the funds and leading the negotiations to further reductions in pensions

All the burning issues of interventions in the insurance bill remain open until Thursday when the technical teams of Greece’s auditors will give the final score for the performance of Vroutsis measures to increase the revenue of funds from combating tax evasion. On Friday, at the meeting with Stournaras, Troika will notify whether they reject or accept the measures and what are their additional claims to cover the financial gap.

However, if a problem should arise the Ministry of Labour has already developed scenarios for reducing pensions of special funds as a result of reductions in the levels of contributions to IKA - which is a memorandum obligation of Greece - and to cut pensions from the former TEBE.

Another turning point for the taking of measures will be the height of the gap that will close in the negotiations. According to the Finance Ministry the fiscal gap will stand at 500 million euros while the Troika at best will estimate it at 1 billion euros.

The auditors, in yesterday's meeting with the Ministry of Labour did a quick scan on other outstanding issues arising from the Memorandum and are claiming:

-       abolition of social resources of funds, which will also suck the last stable source of income and should be covered by the state budget or by reducing pensions and other benefits

-       reduction in employer contributions by 3.9 units, gradually, starting in 2014. The reduction will shrink revenue by 350 million euros annually intensifying the problem of Social Security (IKA). Troika dismissed the Greek side’s request to postpone for one year the implementation of the measure asking proposals for equivalent measures for 2014

-       deregulation of collective layoffs by the end of the year

-       granting of guaranteed minimum income on a test run from 2014

-       crushing of debtors with the help of new tools of checking data is the only way of securing revenues in order to save the main pensions and early retirements

At the same time, in cooperation with the Secretary General of government revenue X. Theoharis, IKA found 10,000 older borrowers who have not joined the setting, blocking the recovery of 1.2 billion euros in VAT. If borrowers do not manage to pay or settle their debts, by offsetting the VAT debts, IKA will receive 200 million euros.