Inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, known as the 'troika', will visit Athens next week, a troika source said today.
"We expect the IMF board to clear the next tranche only after it has commitments from the new government on agreed measures," the source told Reuters.
Earlier, Greece's new unity government under interim Prime Minister Lucas Papademos was sworn in today to ratify a crucial EU bail-out deal and pull the country back from the brink of bankruptcy.
Finance minister Evangelos Venizelos kept his post in the incoming team which includes a former EU commissioner and several far-right politicians, a first since 1974.
According to reports, Venizelos told the coalition's first cabinet meeting that he expected the country's budget deficit to be around 9% of GDP this year.
The figure is close to an estimate from the European Commission released on Thursday that estimated this year's budget deficit at 8.9% of gross domestic product. But it is higher than an 8.5% of GDP deficit estimated in budget documents approved in October, which itself surpassed a 7.6 percent target laid out in the country's international bail-out plan.
The new government's first job will be to persuade the EU and International Monetary Fund to disburse an €8 billion slice of aid from a 2010 bail-out deal that is needed by December 15 before state coffers run dry.
Then it must force through painful austerity measures exacted as the price for a second EU rescue package which gives Athens €100 billion in loans, the same amount in debt reduction and a further €30 billion in guarantees.
Also tasked with holding early elections as soon as the EU deal is ratified by parliament, the new administration can count on the support of 254 deputies in the 300-seat parliament.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Papademos in a message that Berlin would "stand by" Greece as it grapples with its crippling debt crisis.
"I look forward to working with you and assure you that Germany will stand by you and the Greek people in the struggle to contend with our shared challenges in Europe and the euro zone," she wrote.
