BoG head: Primary surplus set to miss target

After the European Commission, Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras also warned on Tuesday that Greece will miss its budget target for this year as a result of the handouts promised by outgoing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The central banker said the data available point to a primary surplus of 2.9 percent of gross domestic product.

According to the BoG, this means that the budget will show a shortfall of 0.6 percent of GDP or 1.1 billion euros from the target for a primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP. This is smaller than the Commission's estimate for a shortfall of 1.2-1.4 percent of GDP this year (2.2-2.8 billion euros).

That is the problem created by the government's management, particularly the policy of handouts ahead of the elections, but it is the administration to emerge from the July 7 polls that will have to deal with that.

According to...