Greece on Friday submitted a draft bill for parliamentary approval of its bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the end of next week, the finance ministry said.
The debt-choked country secured a total of 110 billion euros ($132 billion) in emergency funding to avoid default, of which 80 billion will be supplied by euro zone members and 30 billion by the IMF.
"With the proposed draft bill, the government carries out its political commitment to have all the contractual agreements with which it secured the country's funding by the other euro zone members and the IMF debated and approved by parliament," the finance ministry said in a statement.
The ruling socialist government has a strong majority of 160 deputies in the 300-seat house. "It is a procedural step, the bill's approval should take place in the next few days," said a finance ministry official who declined to be named.
In return for the emergency loans, Greece has pledged to bring its fiscal shortfall under the EU's 3 percent limit by 2014 from 13.6 percent last year and to implement structural reforms in its economy to make it more competitive.
The conservatives main political opposition has said it will not support the agreement because the austerity measures proposed would suffocate growth.
Greece is expected to stay in recession for a second year in a row in 2010 as austerity measures including tax hikes and wage and pension cuts take a toll.
The country's economy, which makes up about 2.5 percent of the euro zone, is expected to contract by about 4 percent, continuing to shed jobs. The ministry said that although the front-loaded package of measures to shore up public finances will initially hurt economic activity, growth should return from 2012.
Under the plan, public debt, expected to peak at 149.1 percent of GDP in 2013, is projected to start coming down thereafter via primary surpluses of at least 5 percent of national output.
"A necessary and important condition for the successful outcome of this effort is to have a significant drop in inflation, below the euro zone's average to restore the country's price competitiveness," the ministry said in an introductory report on the draft bill.
