Minister of Finance Vassos Shiarly is scheduled to present the 2013 state budget before the Council of Ministers on Monday, the first budget to include measures from the memorandum the government is expected to sign with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, after Cyprus appealed to the European Support Mechanism.

In the meantime, the government`s financial team is holding talks in Nicosia with Dutch Menno Snel, who is representing Cyprus in the IMF executive committee, with an aim to draft Cyprus` counter-proposals, which will be presented to the representatives of the Troika when they next visit the island.

Furthermore, a date is expected to be set on Monday for the next visit of the Troika team, which will start talks on the first draft of the memorandum.

According to Shiarly, Cyprus may agree on a memorandum within a month, adding that the aim of the ECOFIN meeting in Nicosia was a public deficit of 2.5% of GDP for 2013, a percentage which was however higher that the 0.5% aim set in the medium-term fiscal framework for 2012-2014.

He added that the Ministry of Finance is expected over the next few days to present a package of measures that would reduce the projected deficit for 2012 by one percentage point. According to Ministry of Finance figures, the public deficit for the first seven months of 2012 was 3.4%