Greece

Details of Greece's €11.5 billion ($14.2 billion) austerity plan are emerging as Prime Minister Antonis Samaras moves to demonstrate his government is serious about cost-cutting efforts ahead of meetings with European leaders later this week, The Wall Street Journal reported. Although the specifics of the cutbacks still remain a work-in-progress, senior government officials have made clear that the new measures will include across-the-board cuts in pension benefits—a politically sensitive issue—as well as wage reductions and layoffs in the broader public sector.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece will be greeted with military honors when he arrives in Berlin on Friday, but his pleas for easier bailout terms are likely to meet a cool reception, a top German official signaled Sunday — setting up a standoff that could unsettle financial markets next week, the International Herald Tribune reported. Volker Kauder, a top official of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party in Germany, told the magazine Der Spiegel that Parliament was in no mood to grant Greece further concessions. “Sooner or later,” said Mr.

The German government stuck to its insistence yesterday that Greece must comply with the reform and austerity conditions agreed in its €130 billion rescue package, but Berlin did not flatly reject any extension of the debt-repayment terms it faces, the Irish Times reported. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will meet Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, for bilateral talks in Berlin next week, at which “everything can be put on the table”, according to Steffen Seibert, the chancellor’s spokesman.

Greece continued its flirtation with national bankruptcy Tuesday, successfully staving off a default on debts owed to the European Central Bank, The Wall Street Journal reported. But at the same time, more information dribbled out on the parlous state of its economy and its banking system. Eurostat estimated that the economy shrank by 6.2% year-on-year in the second quarter, and senior bankers said more than 20% of loans to the domestic economy are now officially "nonperforming." They warned that the problem may overwhelm the sector and derail the country's bail-out program.

Greece is seeking a two-year extension of its latest austerity programme aimed at improving the country’s debt sustainability and prospects for a return to growth, according to a document obtained by the Financial Times. Antonis Samaras, the centre-right prime minister, is expected to outline the proposal during talks next week with Angela Merkel, German chancellor, in Berlin and French President François Hollande in Paris.

Greece's unemployment rate rose to a record 23.1% in May, complicating Athens' efforts to complete deep cuts demanded by international creditors that may involve laying off thousands of public employees, The Wall Street Journal reported. The youngest workers were hardest hit, with more than one in two Greeks, or 54.9%, between 15 and 24 years old looking for work, national statistics agency Elstat said. The jobless rate climbed from 22.6% overall and 51.5% for youths in April. A year earlier, the national average stood at 16.8% overall and 41.7% for 15-24 year olds.

Greece may have to place thousands of public workers in a special labor pool at reduced pay to help achieve as much as €4 billion ($4.95 billion) in spending cuts demanded by international creditors, a politically risky move for the fragile coalition government, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The International Monetary Fund, facing discontent among its members about the huge sums it has lent to the euro zone, is pushing the currency bloc's governments to take steps to lighten the burden of the bailout loans they made to Athens, officials familiar with ongoing discussions said. The IMF pressure, which has been evident in private discussions with euro-zone officials, comes in response to mounting evidence that the country's deep recession has thrown the Greek bailout program woefully off track from targets set earlier this year, Dow Jones reported.

A political row has erupted in Athens after the former head of a big Greek state bank admitted to transferring €8m of personal savings abroad to buy a London property months before his Agricultural Bank headed towards insolvency, the Financial Times reported. Theodoros Pantalakis, former chief executive of Greece’s Agricultural Bank (ATEbank), strongly denied any wrongdoing, telling Realnews, a Greek website, that he had declared the transaction to authorities in 2011 and had paid tax on the amount transferred.

Greece's latest fiscal and reform pledges may be enough to convince international lenders weary after years of broken promises to keep Athens hooked to a 130 billion euro lifeline, but the battle to implement it will be epic, Reuters reported. Few question the new coalition government's resolve but many doubt whether the cantankerous public sector can or will implement the measures or the Greek public, reeling from years of austerity, can take much more without putting up a fight.