Quarterly Report July - September 2016

Quarterly Report July - September 2016

 The current report monitors the evolution of the Greek fiscal aggregates in relation to the targets set in the State Budget and in the Mid-term Fiscal Strategy Frameworks. It focuses on the third quarter of 2016. The report was drawn according to the present policy framework, as it is formed by the Memorandum that the Greek Government has signed with the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Moreover, the report takes into account the current debate on the revision of economic governance, of the EU and the Euro zone in particular.
The Coordinator and the Members of the Scientific Committee of the Office recognize that there are many different approaches within economic policy and that something that is nec-essary on economic terms is not necessarily politically feasible. Furthermore, something that is politically desirable is not always efficient in economic terms.
Our effort is to present the problems and propose solutions to crucial issues, not only in the main body, but also usually in a special chapter at the end of each report. In this report the special chapter is entitled “The Deviations or Forecast Errors of the State Budget (SB) 2006-2016 (on a cash basis)”. In this way we will have another 'tool' for realistic forecasts in the future. We note that the public finance projections of the State Budget must be based on realistic assumptions to avoid overestimates or underestimates. The accuracy of the forecasts of fiscal aggregates is directly related to the accuracy of the macroeconomic forecasts.
The Coordinator of the Office
Professor Panagiotis Liargovas