The IMF is losing confidence the current program for Greece can succeed, reports Der Spiegel, citing an internal agency memo which concludes the country needs either speedier fiscal reform, or a bigger haircut on its debt, or another bailout.
Greece remains a basket case, riddled by life time employment guarantees, guilds, unions, a vast government footprint, tax evasion, systemic corrution and a spineless political system unwilling and unable to reverse decisions which defined and gave birth to this wreck
As previously published in SA Der Spiegel reported in connection with the OECD’s in-depth analysis:
The need for deep structural reforms in Greece is well-known. But a new OECD report indicates that Athens may be incapable of such far-reaching changes. Ministries don’t communicate, officials don’t keep records and oversight is virtually nonexistent. The only thing that might help, it says, is a ‘big bang.’
Going by the rather bland title “Greece: Review of the Central Administration,” the 127-page report can be quickly summed up: The government apparatus in Athens is virtually unable to implement reform.
“It is not clear how existing and new entities of (the government) will work together in order to secure the leadership needed for reform, including the necessary strategic vision, accountability, strategic planning, policy coherence and collective commitment, and communication,” reads the damning report.
It found that communication among the country’s 14 ministries was appallingly paltry. Furthermore, the huge number of departments within ministries — many of them consisting solely of a department head and others with just one or two subordinates — results in widespread inefficiency and lack of oversight.
“Administrative work is fragmented and compartmentalized within ministries,” the report writes. “Ministries are not able to prioritize … and are handicapped by coordination problems. In cases where coordination does happen, it is ad hoc, based on personal initiative and knowledge, and not supported by structures.”
Were such coordination even to take place, the report indicates that administrators do not have access to the necessary data, nor does such data exist in many cases. “The administration does not have the habit of keeping records or the ability to extract information from data (where available), nor generally of managing organizational knowledge,” the report found.
The problems found in Greece’s central administration, says the OECD, are the result of decades of clientelism and the sheer volume of the laws and regulations that govern competencies within the ministries. The report found 17,000 such laws, decrees and edicts.
- CautiousInvestor
