O.E.C.D. Will Advise Greece on Economic Overhauls

By DAVID JOLLYMARCH 12, 2015

The New York Times

PARIS — Greece will get advice from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on ways to revamp the country’s economy, under a deal announced on Thursday.

The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and the head of the O.E.C.D., José Ángel Gurría, made the announcement at a news conference in Paris, indicating that Mr. Gurría’s group would help Greece with the economic changes that its international creditors are demanding in exchange for unlocking additional bailout money.

The O.E.C.D. is a research and discussion forum for the world’s most advanced economies.

Mr. Tsipras also pledged on Thursday that Greece’s embattled government would pursue economic overhauls and chase down tax evaders. In addition, he asserted that the era of painful austerity measures demanded by the country’s creditors, which he said had devastated his country’s growth and social services, had come to an end.

“There will be reforms that will be promoted because we are now at a turning point,” Mr. Tsipras said. “We have a new government that does not depend on the financial oligopolies, we are not dependent on the past. We have a government that is supported by a majority of the people.”

That government, elected in January on the promise to strike a new deal with Greece’s creditors, has frequently voiced resentment against representatives of the so-called troika — the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund — that is overseeing Greece’s 240 billion-euro, or $255 billion, bailout program.

Asked at the news conference whether the O.E.C.D.’s guidance in Greece’s economic overhaul might diminish the role of the troika, Mr. Gurría replied, “Everybody has a job to do.”

He elaborated in a statement by saying that the O.E.C.D. “is not replacing any other institution that the government is working with.” The organization will help Greece create jobs, reduce bureaucracy and improve the efficiency of its public finances, he said.

The Greek government is in a race with the calendar to persuade the troika to provide it with additional loan money necessary to avoid risking default.

The 19 finance ministers of the eurozone agreed in February to extend Greece’s international bailout program by four months. In exchange, Mr. Tsipras’s government pledged to continue efforts to revamp the debt-ridden economy while still addressing the human hardships that Athens attributes to years of austerity budgets that were required by the bailout program.

But the Tsipras government contests some of the terms of the bailout agreement and has proposed some different measures.

The Greek government nonetheless remains committed to putting the February agreement into effect, Mr. Tsipras said on Thursday, noting that he was comfortable with the state of the negotiations. “I don’t feel that I have a noose around my neck,” he said.

Recently, though, tensions have risen between Greek officials and their German counterparts, who have demanded a hard line on the negotiations. Germany, as the richest country in the eurozone, plays a lead role in those talks.

Mr. Tsipras this week accused Berlin of using “legal tricks” to avoid paying compensation for its World War II occupation of Greece. His justice minister, Nikos Paraskevopoulos, suggested that the Greek authorities could seize German property in Greece as compensation. Germany contends that it has settled all of its World War II obligations.

As hopes for a quick compromise on Greece’s debt have faded, Greek bond yields — often seen as a proxy for market confidence and a guide to what it would cost the state to borrow on the market — have risen sharply.

On Thursday, the five-year government bond was trading to yield 14.1 percent, well above its recent low in the past month of 10.6 percent. That was in sharp contrast to the comparable German bond, the European benchmark, which had a yield of minus 0.114 percent — a negative rate indicating that buyers were willing to pay Germany’s government to hold their money.

Greece’s spiking bond yields suggest significant concern about the outlook for a debt deal and the prospects of the country’s eventually having to leave the currency union if it cannot avoid default.