Finance Minister Tsakalotos Optimistic that Pensions will not Need to be Cut
Wednesday, 03 October 2018
Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said he was "almost very optimistic" that pensions, slated to be cut as of January 1, will not be reduced, at an interview he gave to national broadcaster ERT on Tuesday night. Tsakalotos said that the slashing of pensions was imposed by the IMF and the government had voted it because at the time the German elections were coming up and many countries wanted the IMF to be excluded from Greece's fiscal adjustment program. "The government worked hard to convince the institutions (Greece's creditors) and EU member-states that pensions need not be cut, and that there is a fiscal space to keep them" and to introduce countermeasures or replacements for revenues.