LONDON (MNI) – Greek Finance Minister Giorgios Papaconstantinou
sought to distance his country from troubled Ireland tonight, saying
that Greece “is not Ireland” and stressed that Greece’s banks had not
got ahead of themselves as in Ireland.
In a speech at the London School of Economics, the minister warned
that Eurostat’s estimate for the budget deficit of Greece in 2009 would
be “substantially” higher compared with that already announced.
Papaconstantinou said that Greece would end this year with the
budget deficit 5.5% percentage points lower than it started but that the
country had only taken the “first steps on a long and difficult road”.
But Greece is winning support from its own voters for the measures
it has had to take and said that he expected that the current government
would win an election with a narrow majority.
He admitted that Greeks did not find the current austerity policies
easy to live up to:
“We’re not a collective society,” he said.
“It doesn’t come naturally,” he continued.
–London newsroom: 00 44 20 7862 7492; e-mail: nshamim@marketnews.com
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