ΔΝΤ 25.000 απολύσεις τους τρεις επόμενους μήνες !

Απόσπασμα από την τελευταία ενημέρωση του εκπροσώπου τύπου του ΔΝΤ

QUESTIONER: There are a lot of reports in Greece that the Troika asked the Greek government to fire 25,000 people in the next 3 months. Do you want to comment on this?

MR. MURRAY: Yes, I do want to comment on this. I'm glad you brought that up. The numbers are all over the place, too, first of all, so that that number is in the ether, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

We've explained this before, so I'm repeating our view on this. Greece has done a very impressive job so far on fiscal consolidation. If there is more progress with structural reforms and especially if Greece can do a better job of collecting taxes, then the government should be able to avoid further wage and pension cuts. That's an important point. If Greece can do a better job collecting taxes, then the government should be able to avoid further wage and pension cuts.

Regarding public sector employment, the government is producing staffing plans for each of its ministries. That's underway. It's expected that these plans will be used first and foremost to ensure that critical positions in the government will remain fully staffed as the public sector goes through a wave of retirements. To the extent that staffing plans identify surpluses of some types of employees, the government may need to adjust employment levels through mandatory redundancies, but this is ongoing work. We have not yet discussed the numbers with the government. And as I mentioned, collecting taxes will feed into the end result. Let's try to move on to other topics, but go ahead.