Greece's economy should start recovering by the end of the year, Greek Finance Minister Yannis Papathanassiou said on Monday.
Papathanassiou confirmed that Greece expects growth to be close to zero this year. Greece cut its 2009 growth forecast to around zero last week, down from 1.1 percent previously.
"Our estimate is that the Greek economy will start recovering towards the end of 2009, and will have returned in due course to positive growth rates in 2010," he said in a speech.
The European Commission, IMF and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development all forecast a recession this year, the country's first since 1993.
In a bid to shore up its budget, Greece announced a 1.9 billion euro ($2.66 billion) package of new tax measures last week.
"We are determined to take long-term and structural measures in October, ahead of drafting the 2010 budget," Papathanassiou said at a conference organised by Greece's Economic and Industrial Research Foundation (IOVE).
The measures will be aimed at cracking down on tax evasion and containing state expenses, he said.
Greece's 250 billion euro economy slowed sharply to an annual rate of growth of 0.3 percent in the first quarter from 2.4 percent in the last three months of 2008.
Papathanassiou said that the two major problems Greece was facing were a high budget deficit and a huge debt, adding that these had been exacerbated by the crisis.
Greece's debt reached 97.6 percent of GDP last year, the European Union's second-highest debt-to-GDP ratio. The budget deficit has exceeded the EU's 3-percent ceiling in seven out of the eight years it has been using the euro.
(Additional reporting by Harry Papachristou; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Ron Askew)

Source : Reuters