Greece heads for another audit of its battered finances this week after European officials closed ranks to quash fears of an inglorious Greek exit from the euro cited in a German online report.
A high-level team of experts from the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank will pore over plans by the Greek government to economise some 26 billion euros over three years to help bring down the country\'s enormous debt.
"The mission will begin on Tuesday," a finance ministry source said.
Socialist-led Greece is under pressure to deliver on a painful overhaul of its parlous economy after taking a 110-billion-euro ($157-billion) bailout loan from the EU and the International Monetary Fund last year.
The delivery of a 12-billion-euro instalment from that loan hinges on the audit but Greece so far has struggled to meet its deficit-reduction targets because of a deeper-than-expected recession at home.
With Athens increasingly likely to need more help to meet its debt repayments from 2012, eurozone ministers met unofficially on Friday to "plan the next steps" in the face of market scepticism, the finance ministry said.
But the meeting backfired when German daily Der Spiegel reported that the participants were also to discuss the prospect of Greece leaving the eurozone, forcing senior Europeans into a flurry of denials.
Other news reports said the eurozone officials had debated milder recovery terms for Athens that could include an extension of debt repayment and more time to meet deficit reduction goals.
Greece currently has a debt of 340 billion euros.
Without naming its source, French business daily Les Echos said Saturday that Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou had secured tacit acceptance that Greece\'s political backers could make another 20-25 billion available if more cuts and accelerated state sell-offs failed.
In past weeks, a number of prominent Socialists including the head of the parliamentary economic oversight committee and a former prime minister have spoken in favour of debt restructuring, a move rejected by the government.
Labour Minister Louka Katseli, an economist and former OECD official, joined the fray on Sunday in statements to Eleftherotypia daily, favouring a repayment extension over a debt haircut.
A \'haircut\' is a form of restructuring that entails losses for debt holders.
"Any logical person would agree...with a possible payment extension or a reduction in the cost of borrowing," Katseli said.
"But a haircut or debt default would only help profiteers," she said, noting that Greece\'s ailing state security funds have invested 75 percent of their property in Greek bonds.
The government has denied any possibility of seeking easier repayment terms on its debt, except the 110-billion-euro loan from the EU and IMF on which it has already secured an repayment extension.
Athens\' eurozone partners in March agreed to cut the cost for this bailout package by a full percentage point and extend its maturity to 7-1/2 years from three years.
The government says any restructuring of private debt would be a "huge mistake" that would unnerve investors already jittery over Greece, and undermine its efforts to restore confidence by overhauling the economy.
In April it announced a major adjustment worth some 23 billion euros from 2012 to 2015, of which two thirds from spending cuts.
Another three billion euros in "corrective" measures will be enacted in 2011, and Greece will also sell a first batch of state assets worth 15 billion euros including stakes in several public corporations.
"The government has taken and will continue to take whichever decisions are needed to maintain the country\'s salvation course," Papaconstantinou said on Saturday.
But the measures announced so far may not be enough to meet a revenue shortfall witnessed in the first months of the year.
Eleftherotypia on Sunday said an additional 1.0 billion euros would be drawn from tax hikes on property and fuel and new cuts in civil servants\' salaries and pensions.
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