The new Greek government will freeze plans to privatize the country’s Public Power Corporation (DEH), the energy minister said on Wednesday. Also, Greece will put a stop to the sale of Piraeus Port to China.
“We will halt immediately any privatization of the PPC,” Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis said on Greek television.
The previous government had passed legislation last year to sell 30 percent of PPC to private groups as part of its efforts to liberalize its energy market.
Leftist SYRIZA had pledged to stop privatization of state assets. The previous conservative government had agree to sell state assets as part of the bailout program.
Also, on Tuesday, the new government announced that it was stopping the planned sale of a 67 percent stake in the Piraeus Port Authority, agreed under its international bailout deal for which China’s Cosco Group and four other suitors had been shortlisted.
“The Cosco deal will be reviewed to the benefit of the Greek people,” Thodoris Dritsas, deputy minister in charge of the shipping portfolio, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, the deputy minister in charge of administrative reform, George Katrougkalos said the government would reverse some layoffs of public sector employees, rolling back another key bailout measure.
“It will be one of the first pieces of legislation that I will bring in as a minister,” he told Mega TV.
The new government has promised the re-hiring of 10,000 public sector employees who were laid off as part of the bailout measures. The 320 cleaners from the finance ministry who were fired, will be re-hired immediately.
New finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said, “We are about to begin negotiating with our partners. It’s a great challenge, but the challenge is how to minimize social costs that were unnecessary throughout Europe.”
The first cabinet meeting took place at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
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