The government on Friday, 29 July, tabled three amendments to a draft bill on “Measures for Growth and Fiscal Reform” that legislate for the abolition or merger of several state agencies, mergers of tax offices and drastic reductions in benefits paid to civil servants.
The amendment on the abolition of various broader public sector organizations or entities and their merger with others in a related field concerns some 30 agencies and organizations. The changes seek to reduce the cost of running the public sector, with savings generated by the use of the staff currently employed in these organizations, by exploiting their assets for other purposes, and from the economies of scale expected to arise.
Another amendment attached to the draft bill allows the Finance Minister to replace the directors of tax offices that fail to meet their three-monthly targets for the increase of tax and other revenues.
It also allows the re-examination of old tax cases and renames the Taxation of Anonymous Industrial Companies Office as the Large Businesses Tax Office, putting this in charge of all large companies throughout the country, from all tax offices.
At the same time, it creates a general directorate of Tax Inspections and Collection of Public Revenues that will be in charge of chasing overdue debts to the public sector.
The same amendment boosts the powers of the Interior and Finance ministries to deal with corrupt tax officials and creates new departments to combat tax evasion.
A third amendment tabled by Administrative Reform and e-Government Minister Dimitris Reppas and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos drastically reduces a number of key benefits paid to civil servants, which are reduced from 10 percent to 50 percent as of July 1, 2011. This includes a 50 percent reduction of a performance incentive benefit currently paid to nearly all public-sector staff that currently ranges between 57 and 100 euro a month.
(source: ana-mpa)
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