With Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras desperate to keep the country’s debt-laden economy from going under, he won’t get a report from international lenders on how reforms are progressing until October, when the last installment of a first series of $152 billion in rescue loans is set to be disbursed.
Samaras’ uneasy coalition government is charged with imposing more austerity measures and making another $14.16 billion in cuts to get a second bailout, this one for $173 billion that is on hold until it does. Greece is waiting for the $38.8 billion due from the first round so it can keep paying workers and pensioners, although the government has stopped paying its bills.
With so much at stake, inspectors from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) will not deliver their findings until well after the government decides where it will make the cuts, although media reports said they are again aimed at workers, pensioners and the poor.
Germany’s Rheinische Post reported that a European Commission official said the Troika report – which was due in September – has been pushed back because Samaras’ government has dragged its heels on speeding the pace of privatizations of state entities and the sale or lease of state properties.
“The plans for privatization will be implementable at the earliest within the month of September,” the German daily quoted the official as saying. Costas Mitropoulos, who resigned last month from the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, has repeatedly said that a lack of political will hampered the progress of privatizations.
It was unclear if the report would be ready before an Oct. 8 meeting of finance ministers of the Eurozone of the 17 countries, including Greece, that use the euro as a currency. A summit of EU leaders is also set for Oct. 18. Samaras has insisted that privatizations are a key to boosting growth in Greece but has done little about it.
He just returned from visits to Berlin and Paris to brief German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on his plans, but did not ask them directly for a two-year delay he said is necessary because pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions have worsened Greece’s five-year recession, slowing recovery.
(Source: Kathimerini)
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