Washington--Greece was told Saturday to urgently deliver a detailed fiscal and debt plan to official lenders as the IMF-World Bank spring meetings wound up amid escalating worries of a looming default.
As Athens' talks with creditors continued in Paris, both IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi warned in Washington that Greece has not provided enough information about how its economic and reform plans will impact its finances.
With Greece seeking the release of another 7.2 billion euros ($7.8 billion) in bailout funds from the European Union, Draghi cautioned that not reaching an agreement would take the situation into "uncharted waters."
He and Lagarde said that however the new leftist Greek government of Alexis Tsipras wanted to adjust policies under the country's massive bailout, it still needed to demonstrate the effect on the budget and debt.
"More work, much more work is needed now, and it's urgent," Draghi said, against the backdrop of increasing fears for the very existence of the eurozone.
"Any government is free to choose what they can do," he added.
"We have to have an overall framework... we have to have a methodology in place whereby which we can assess the quantitative impact, the fiscal impact of these proposals."
"At this point in time is to have in place a framework that allows a well-informed political discussion by the Eurogroup and the Greek government."
Lagarde said she and her number two at the IMF, David Lipton, had each met Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis over the past two days and pressed him for a more detailed plan.
"The job as finance minister... is to go deep into the analysis, pull out the numbers, assessing the efforts undertaking, making a few hypotheticals about what it will deliver in terms of growth, in terms of fiscal revenues, or spending," she said.
"It's not a question of racing to the end. It's a question of doing all the work that needs to be done."
AFP
