Greece needs more cuts not higher taxes, says IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has told Greece it needs better tax collection and deeper spending cuts, not higher taxes, to avert its crisis.

The warning comes as Greece prepares for further funding talks with the IMF, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission.

It is trying to persuade them to release the next 8bn-euro (£7bn, $11bn) instalment of its EU-IMF loan.

Greece needs this money by next month to avoid defaulting on its debt.

The loan comes with the condition that Greece dramatically reduce its deficit, something that it plans to do by cutting the size of the state sector through redundancies, pay cuts and privatisations.

The IMF representative for Greece, Bob Traa, who is in Athens, said this was of crucial importance: "The public sector is very large. Another central element in our view must be to reduce public sector spending.

"This will inevitably require the closure of inefficient state entities as well as reductions in the excessively large public sector workforce and generous public sector wages, which in some cases are above those of the equivalent private sector workers."