Finance minister

Krasimir Angarski will replace Kiril Ananiev as a member of the Bulgarian Development Bank's Supervisory Board, the Finance Ministry says.

Ananiev was appointed interim Finance Minister at the end of January and is barred from being a member of the board as the ministry owns a 99.9% stake.

The German Finance Ministry on Thursday rebuffed reports according to which German officials had invited Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos for dinner with his German peer Wolfgang Schaeuble and top International Monetary Fund official Poul Thomsen.

In comments on Thursday following a heated session in Greece's Parliament the night before, opposition New Democracy spokesman Vassilis Kikilias drew attention to an apparent rift within the government over economic policy following a clash between Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and House speaker Nikos Voutsis.

Ministers will be asked to sign a "memorandum of cooperation" as part of the government's effort to avoid a divergence from the fiscal targets of 2017.

In a circular issued by Alternate Finance Minister Giorgos Houliarakis, ministries are given a detailed account of the commitments they have undertaken in order to secure a primary surplus of 1.75 percent of GDP in 2017.

The European Union should discuss debt relief for Greece and potentially move ahead even without the International Monetary Fund, Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno said in an interview published Tuesday by the Bild newspaper.

"We have to start this discussion," the German newspaper quoted Centeno as saying.

Another day of intense negotiations on the implementation of Greece’s third bailout program  were completed today between high-ranking government officials and the foreign envoys representing the country’s creditors with “substantial convergence,” finance ministry sources said Monday.

The draft budget's projections for 2017 are being scrutinized by the country's creditors and their chief representatives are demanding more data to verify the credibility of the Finance Ministry's assessments.

New decisions on the maximum number of public sector employees will be made by the end of this year as a starting basis for 2017.

Serbian Minister of Finance Dusan Vujovic said this on Monday.

The issue of taxing the earnings of unofficial holiday accommodation such as homes and apartments in Greece is, along with the taxation of undeclared funds deposited abroad, a key matter in talks between the Finance Ministry and the representatives of the country's creditors.

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos  and Alternate Finance Minister Giorgos Chouliarakis will ask for a lower fiscal target for Greece after 2018 from the representatives of the institutions on Thursday.