Greece's government has narrowly missed its deficit target for 2010, reporting a shortfall of €23.1 billion for the year.
The figure was announced by the Finance Ministry's General Accounting Office on Tuesday, compared with the €21.9 billion target included in this year's state budget. The agency said the final figure will be adjusted to fully comply with the European Union accounting standard.
Also according to the report, the outstanding debt of government ministries and the country’s regions totaled 832.53 million euros at the end of 2010, up from 718.21 million euros in November 30 and 621 million euros in October 31, 2010.
The report attributed this increase to a change in the way these debts were recorded. More analytically, of the total 832.53 million euros of outstanding debt, 435.5 million covered the public investments programme and 397 million euros the regular budget. Legal entities’ debt to third parties totaled 4.520 billion euros, of which 551.9 million were local government organizations, 2.225 billion euros were hospitals, 1.583 billion were social insurance organizations and 159.4 million euros other legal entities. Legal entities’ total debt obligation to third parties totaled 8.6 billion euros, while the general government’s deficit totaled 23.1 billion euros in 2010.
source: AP, ANA
