SPD delays Bundestag’s Greek tranche hearing
DAVOS (Reuters) – Germany’s parliamentary budget committee will discuss paying the next tranche of aid to Greece next week, a senior lawmaker from the Social Democrat Party (SDP) said yesterday, prolonging uncertainty over whether the deal needs parliamentary approval. Three months before an election, some lawmakers from the SPD, the junior partner in Angela Merkel’s coalition, are seeking a full parliamentary debate on the 8.5-billioneuro loan to Greece – which would expose sharp divisions within Merkel’s conservative parliamentary group. The budget committee, which had been expected to meet today, has to decide if the full house has to approve the disbursement of a fresh tranche that was agreed to by eurozone finance ministers last week. “The budget committee will only address the latest decision of the Eurogroup in its next weekly sitting,” the SPD’s budget policy spokesman Johannes Kahrs said. “It is clearly uncomfortable for the [conservative] fraction that the IMF is not involved... even though [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaeuble promised it would be.” The IMF has said it would like to see some of Greece’s debts being written off in return for its participation in the bailout deal, a move that would be unpopular in Germany. Earlier, Merkel ally Michael Grosse-Broemer had said that no parliamentary vote would be needed, suggesting that the budget committee could nod the new deal through.
Outstanding pension issues (including main and supplementary pensions and retirement lump sums) number 327,573, official figures show, with the Labor Ministry and the social security funds struggling to have at least 60,000-70,000 main pensions and 62,600 lump sums issued by year-end. and an increase in the primary income surplus, the Bank of Greece said yesterday. The data showed the deficit at 462 million euros from 872 million euros in April 2016. “A year-on-year drop of 196 million euros in the deficit of the balance of goods is attributable to a decrease mostly in the deficit of the oil balance and to a lesser extent of the non-oil balance of goods,” the Bank of Greece said. Non-oil exports of goods at current prices remained virtually flat, while they declined by 2.6 percent at constant prices, it said. The 176-million-euro rise in the primary income account surplus was mainly due to higher net interest, dividend and profit receipts. In 2016 as a whole, Greece posted a current account deficit of 1.1 billion euros versus a surplus of 206 million in 2015 as a result of a lower services balance surplus.