Your trusted source

 Greece expects the budget deficit in 2010 will be larger than initially targeted after the EU's statistics agency said Monday the country's debt last year was actually much higher than projected.

But the country, which has been struggling with a severe financial crisis for the past year and is receiving a euro110 billion ($150 billion), three-year package of rescue loans to keep it from defaulting on its debts, insisted it was still on track to achieve an "unprecedented" 6 percentage point deficit reduction.

Eurostat, the statistics agency, said Greece's 2009 budget deficit reached 15.4 percent of gross domestic product, significantly above its previous estimate of 13.6 percent.

That means Greece will not achieve its initial target of lowering the deficit to 8.1 percent of GDP by the end of this year, with the Finance Ministry saying the 2010 deficit was now estimated to be 9.4 percent of GDP.

"Despite the data revision, the deficit reduction in 2010 is larger than initially targeted; 6 percentage points of GDP against a targeted reduction of 5.5 percentage points," the ministry said in a statement.