ATHENS–The head of an IMF mis­sion to Greece says a ma­jor new round of aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures im­posed by the coun­try's coali­tion gov­ern­ment has put its fi­nan­cial re­cov­ery pro­gramme back on tar­get, fol­low­ing months of stag­na­tion and po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty. The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund's Poul Thom­sen said yes­ter­day that rapid im­prove­ment had oc­curred af­ter the pro­gramme had fall­en "sig­nif­i­cant­ly off track" ear­li­er in 2012.

Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter An­to­nis Sama­ras formed a coali­tion gov­ern­ment af­ter gen­er­al elec­tions in June last year, end­ing sev­en months of po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty af­ter the pre­vi­ous So­cial­ist gov­ern­ment formed an in­ter­im al­liance with its po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents to guar­an­tee con­tin­ued bailout pay­ments and a pri­vate debt-re­struc­tur­ing deal.

Ear­li­er this week, the IMF ap­proved a long-de­layed US$4.3 bil­lion loan in­stall­ment to Greece fol­low­ing an eco­nom­ic re­view.

AP