QUESTIONER: As you know the Prime Minister of Greece closed down the
Greek state TV. First I wanted to ask you if the IMF or the Troika put
pressure to the Prime Minister to close down the state TV. And second,
because many people believe that it’s a violation of the freedom of the
press, what is the IMF’s position on the closing of the state Greek TV?
MR. RICE: On that issue I would say that the recent decisions
regarding the state broadcaster have been the government’s. The
authorities’ economic program is supported by IMF lending and that
includes a reform of public administration as you know, but does not
make specific recommendations on decisions involving state companies. So
the IMF identifies a country’s fiscal envelope and the related fiscal
targets, but it doesn’t determine how those are achieved. And that’s
true in Greece and true in the countries where we work.
QUESTIONER: May I follow up on this? Do you think that Greece chose
the right way to do the first layoffs in the public sector reforms
without causing political instability?
MR. RICE: You know, I just repeat that this is a prerogative of the
government, so I’m not going to comment further on the implementation of
that.
QUESTIONER: But do you worry about the political instability in Greece?
MR. RICE: Well, maybe just stepping back, from that question. As you
know a mission has recently been in Greece, the mission of the so-called
Troika -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the
IMF -- and they have been reviewing the government’s economic program.
We believe that important progress has been made. To allow completion of
technical work, policy discussions will pause, but are expected to
resume by the end of the month. So that’s the status of where we are
with Greece.
QUESTIONER: These technical issues, that sounds very vague. Now in
the past that’s been because there’s been a failure to agree on the way
forward. Is that the case this time, and could you give us more details
what those problems are?
MR. RICE: You know we’ve paused the mission, so in that sense we’re
still in the mission. And as you probably know, we don’t discuss details
of discussions during the missions. I would reiterate that important
progress has been made and discussions then are continuing and will
continue on technical work. And we expect that to happen fairly soon, by
the end of this month.
QUESTIONER: On this issue, wasn’t Greece ready to give answers to your questions?
MR. RICE: You know I’m sounding repetitive here, but there’s a number
of technical issues that clearly are still being discussed, and we’re
going to resume that discussion at the end of the month. But, again,
we’ve said that important progress has been made already.
QUESTIONER: Do you think that this -- MR. RICE: I’ll come back to you, but let me move on.
QUESTIONER: Well, I have Greece and Cyprus, so let’s stay in the region.
MR. RICE: So we’re not moving on.
MS. RASTELLO: No, we’re just staying in the neighborhood. But just --
I mean this is technical, but as we know the privatization plans didn’t
go as planned, let’s say again. So isn’t that more than a technical
hurdle? How did you make up for that? That’s one of the criteria; if
they’re not met, that could blow the whole disbursement.
And my question on Cyprus is as we’ve seen in this letter that the
government and the EU sent to the IMF. Could you tell us whether that
changes anything to the program? Are you going to discuss? Or how is the
next disbursement looking?
MR. RICE: I don’t have much to add on Greece, but let’s not get ahead
of ourselves. And, you know, let’s have the discussions continue toward
the end of the month. And then we will be in a better position to give
you more of a detailed assessment.
