Greece: Staff Report for the 1999 Article IV Consultation

International Monetary Fund

No 1999/131, IMF Staff Country Reports from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This 1999 Article IV Consultation with Greece highlights that the ‘regime switch’ represented by the drachma devaluation, ERM entry, and the accompanying strengthening of policies was deemed essential also by the staff, both for competitiveness and confidence reasons. The monetary policy stance centered on high interest rates and a strong drachma-has been tight, contributing to the anti-inflationary effort. The growth of mortgage and consumer lending has been particularly brisk, raising Bank of Greece concerns about its potential inflationary impact. On structural reforms, progress has been visible with regard to privatization and some aspects of public enterprise restructuring, but much remains to be done, while broad social security and labor market reforms remain largely on hold. The IMF staff recognized that, having eschewed what it saw as the preferable option of an immediate post-devaluation tightening of the fiscal stance, the authorities had left themselves with limited policy tools to restrain inflation within the short time span available to the Maastricht test date.

Keywords: ISCR; CR; GDP; deficit; core inflation; harmonized inflation index; foodstuff price; EMU qualification; convergence program target; interest rate fall; Inflation; Consumption; Fiscal stance; Privatization; Europe; Southern Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57
Date: 1999-11-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=3290 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfscr:1999/131

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Staff Country Reports from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().