IMF team head : Growth in Greece will begin in 2013

International Monetary Fund (IMF) European Department deputy director Poul Thomsen, who headed the IMF team of inspectors of the EU-IMF troika to Athens for the first quarterly progress report, predicted that growth would begin in Greece in 2013, in an interview appearing in the Friday edition of To Vima newspaper.

That will be when the Greek people will see that the hard times have gone, that jobs are being created, no longer in the public sector but, rather, in the private sector, and Greece will enter a stage of 'maintainable development' and they will see incomes rising, he said.

"This is the only way for raising pensions and salaries in the public sector," he added.

On the thorny issue of generating revenues and the overall restructure of the tax collection mechanism, and the timetable for the government succeeding in reducing the deficit to the 2010 targets, Thomsen said that an ad hoc team being set up will aim to collect tax revenues from people in the high-income brackets who are currently tax dodging. "The good news is that you do not need a taxation mechanism to achieve this, because you already know who have the large villas, swimming pools and connections. What is needed is the political will," he said.

Turning to the reforms foreseen in the Memorandum, which are expected to have an immediate positive impact on the economy's growth, Thomsen made special mention of the planned opening of the closed-shop professions and lifting of cabotage restrictions, adding that, "without doubt, there are established interests that will react, but you need to think smart and choose the right battles".