ATHENS - With Greece and its lenders still at odds over unfinished reforms and a hole in the 2014 budget that is holding up release of a one billion euro ($1.37 billion) installment, the government can still avoid more austerity, an envoy for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said.
Poul Thomsen is the point man in Athens for the IMF, which, along with the European Union and European Central Bank makes up the Troika which is putting up $325 billion in two bailouts to save the economy from collapsing.
Those have come, however, with harsh pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and the coming firing of as many as 40,000 public workers and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, fearing social unrest if he reneges on his promise not to implement more, said Greece can fill a budget hole of as much as 2.9 billion euros ($3.67 billion) without doing it again.
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