Parliament’s independent Budget Office on Wednesday referred to a “positive development” with the previous day’s first exit by the Greek state to test sovereign debt markets in three years.
In echoing representatives of institutional creditors, the Budget Office said more attempts to drain finance from the capital markets “can continue, under certain conditions”.
The same independent office, in its three-month reform on the course of the Greek economy, also insisted on a forecast of 1.5 to 1.6 percent GDP growth for 2017, while at the same time warning that the country’s economic recovery is fragile and susceptible to interruption if “the path of reforms is abandoned or political instability returns”.
The significantly lower GDP prediction – compared to the ambitious 2.7 percent listed in the state budget for 2017 – emanates from the major delay in concluding the second review of the Greek program and related uncertainty, as well as more tax burdens, according to the Budget Office.