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| - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday said his country, recovering from a decade-long debt crisis, wanted more freedom to manage its annual primary surplus. "If we overperform in one year, let it count towards the next year," Mitsotakis said at the Davos economic forum. "We don't have a smoothing mechanism for our primary surplus. So if we deliver a bigger primary surplus, as we will in 2019, there's no way for me to carry it over to the next year." "It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Then my incentive is to spend it at the end of the year. That's not serious fiscal policy," Mitsotakis said. Under the terms of its final bailout, negotiated by the previous leftist government, Greece must produce a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP until 2022 and of 2.2 percent of GDP on average to 2060. Primary budget surpluses exclude government debt interest payments. In its latest budget, Athens forecasts a primary surplus of just over 3.5 percent of GDP in 2020. Elected in July on a ticket of tax cuts and growth, the conservative Mitsotakis has vowed to renegotiate the 3.5 percent target. Athens is "on a good path to convince our creditors to relax our fiscal targets for 2021," he said Thursday. jph/jh
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