Greek Finance Minister, George Papaconstantinou, said Sunday that comments made to the weekend press by the European Commission mission chief, one of its backstopping lenders of last resort, were at the least off target and certainly inaccurate.
The European Commission representative for the Greek mission, Servaas Deroose, gave several interviews to local Sunday papers. The commission with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank oversee the progress of Greek reforms in exchange for the EUR110 billion bailout to prevent certain insolvency for the financially troubled country.
In those newspaper interviews Deroose pressed Greece to “sell” beach-front land, listed publicly controlled enterprises like electricity utility Public Power Corp., and engage in a massive sell off program of state portfolio holdings and real estate to raise EUR50 billion from privatizations by the end of 2015. The effort is deemed as absolutely necessary to reduce the nations EUR330.1 billion debt, according to Deroose’s comments.
“The purported statements of the European Commission representative in Sunday newspapers are at the very least off target, and certainly inaccurate,” Papaconstantinou said in a press statement midday Sunday.
“We are exploiting the state’s real estate assets, but we are not auctioning off public lands. And the decisions, on what and how, are officially made by the Greek government and no one else,” Papaconstantinou said in the statement issued Sunday.
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