If you were spending 16 billion euros a year, would you like to know where the money goes? The nominally conservative government of Greece, after being in power for four years, has reached the point now that perhaps it’s time to look into it. Especially since that 16 billion represents something that approaches a fifth of its annual budget.

In all fairness though things are improving considering that the socialist government that got out of office in 2004 never bothered with such trifles.

The undersecretary of Economy and Finance, Nikos Legas, stated to Greece’s paper of record Kathimerini (here is the full story for those who can read Greek) that “today there is no clear picture of the policies and actions that get funded, and also of the bodies that implement them.”

Leonidas Stergiou, the writer of the story, notes that much of the chaos is caused by the byzantine structure (we Greeks stay true to our traditions) of the public sector. The ministries have their budgets which are distributed to agencies – the agencies have subsidiaries.

Also it is not unusual for an agency to be monitored by more than one ministry.

The ministry of Economy and Finance is unable to tell:
a) what agencies get funded
b) how many people they employ
c) what on earth they are doing

The ministry also admits that even if it knew the answer to the above questions it wouldn’t be able to evaluate the performance of those agencies. This is the icing on the top element of the story.