Greece to appoint new head to tarnished stats office

Greece will appoint a new head for its statistics service next week as it attempts to restore some of the credibility lost by a massive underestimate of the government's budget deficit, the finance minister said on Thursday.

"We will be appointing the new head (of the statistics service) with a four-fifths majority in parliament to guarantee independence," Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told an annual meeting of OECD budget officials in Athens.

Greece unveiled legislation in February to make its discredited statistics service fully independent after the European Union demanded it put an end to the release of flawed economic data.

"(We aim) to basically build it again from the bottom up into an organisation that produces reliable, timely data that reflect the real value of the economy," Papaconstantinou said.

Frequent revisions of national account data since the country joined the euro zone in 2001 have infuriated its European Union partners, who demanded an overhaul of the service. [LDE6101MH].

Greece's revelation in October last year that the 2009 deficit would be twice as big as previous estimates — and four times the EU ceiling — prompted Eurogroup Chairman Jean Claude Juncker to say "the game is over — we need serious statistics."

Fixing the statistics service is part of the socialist government's efforts to restore the country's credibility with financial markets.

The agency's independence aims to stop political meddling by giving parliament — rather than the finance ministry — the task of appointing the chief of the statistics office.