By T. Tsiros
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Creditors' auditors have reportedly detected a "limited" fiscal gap for 2018 of between 150 to 200 million euros in the Greek state's budget, as negotiations continued in Athens this week with a view to concluding the third review of the ongoing bailout by the end of the year.
Nevertheless, government officials believe the sum is "manageable", given that the budget for 2018 exceeds 50 billion euros, the same reports state.
The specific fiscal discrepancy will dominate talks on Friday, the last face-to-face meeting between creditors' representatives and the Greek side, with distance negotiations to continue next week.
A government source who spoke to "N" on Thursday referred to "significant progress" on the fiscal front, with both staff-level cadres and top auditors reportedly accepting that the 2017 budget will close with the primary budget surplus goal surpassed.
However, both sides have not agreed on the level of the forecast "over-performance" in terms of the primary budget surplus. This figure is crucial to determining the amount of a "social dividend" the Tsipras government desperately wants to dole out in December.
The leftist-rightist coalition government continues to insist that it can divvy up some 800 million euros - the sum derived from a projected over-performance above the fiscal target (2.2 percent of GDP) - to what it defines as weaker social strata, towards covering arrears and funneled into a "cushion" for debt servicing.
