Greece on Wednesday again ruled out any restructuring of its soaring debt as EU, IMF and European Central Bank experts picked through a new three-year austerity budget coming this month. The Socialist government, which has received mixed results from unpopular economic policies agreed with its international creditors, is now pledging to cut its runaway deficit by some nine percentage points by 2015.
"Under no condition are we going to restructure (the debt)," government spokesman George Petalotis told reporters. "We completely rule out this option because we know how damaging it could be," he added. Athens has consistently opposed the move for fear of destroying the country's fragile credibility with markets and to avoid placing major strain on the nation's banks, which are exposed to part of the state debt that has exploded to over 300 billion euros ($426 billion).
But the ruling party is now facing such calls from within its ranks from cadres arguing that current economic policy leads nowhere. "We are constantly taking measures and we are entering a vicious circle," Vasso Papandreou, a senior Socialist, told Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou on Tuesday.
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