Athens News Agency: News in English, 05-11-20

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] 2006 budget to be tabled in Parliament on Monday

[01] 2006 budget to be tabled in Parliament on Monday

The basic aim of the new budget is the reduction of the deficits below 3 per cent of the Gross National Product from 4.3 per cent which is expected this year.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, said in Northern Greece on Saturday, that "the government will proceed with determination in changes and reforms."

The new budget foresees revenues by 7.9 per cent and the curbing of expenditures at 4.8 per cent.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, who was on a tour of Grevena and Metsovo over the weekend, said on Saturday that "the government will proceed with determination in changes and reforms."

Speaking at the Grevena Prefecture, Karamanlis said "there is already a new political climate of no tolerance to corruption."

He added:"There are already in progress brave procedures for cleansing in many sectors of public life. There are in progress procedures for self-cleansing in justice. The road has opened. What is needed is daring and responsibility by all the forces which constitute the country's public life. The citizens demand from all, volition, persistence, determination. We answer with a coordinated strategy of transparency. We answer with policies of transparency."

The prime minister criticised the main opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) of "danger-mongering" and "irresponsibility". He said that the policies of the PASOK governments had "failed" and that the PASOK cadres "are responsible for the creation of the great economic and social problems in the country."

He said that programmes are being advanced in the prefecture of Grevena for the support of farmers and the proposal by Deputy Economy and Finance Minister and Grevena deputy Christos Folias for Grevena to be become by the end of the decade the country's first ecological prefecture for organic cultivations.

Significant emphasis was also given to the support of agricultural tourism.

The prime minister is accompanied, among others, by Folias, Macedonia-Thrace Minister Nikos Tsiartsionis and ruling New Democracy (ND) party Secretary Vangelis Meimarakis.

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article