Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 13-04-30

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

CONTENTS

[01] Task Force for Greece sees 'steady progress' in 4th quarterly report

[02] SYRIZA says government's hidden agenda is revealed

[03] State overdue debt repayment to the private sector totals 3.7 bln euros

[01] Task Force for Greece sees 'steady progress' in 4th quarterly report

The report describes the assistance provided by the Task Force, the EU member-states, international organisations and other specialist bodies to support Greece in the implementation of a comprehensive programme of reforms.

It said that notable progress has been made in areas such as reforming central administration, through a review of the organisation of Greek ministries, in concession agreements for the construction and improvement of motorways, facilitating exports through simplified legislation and new structures allowing an out-of-court settlement of disputes through arbitration.

In comments after the TFGR report was approved, European Commissioner for economic and monetary affairs Olli Rehn said that the Task Force plays an important role in supporting Greece during the implementation of the very demanding process of deep structural reforms.

He noted that the reforms were necessary to make Greece's economy more competitive and capable of generating sustainable growth and employment, stressing the need to keep up the pace of reforms, combined with the commitment and determination show in recent months by Greek authorities and the Greek people.

[02] SYRIZA says government's hidden agenda is revealed

"The government repeated the same blackmail threats made thousands of times before against the Greek people, and paved the way for even tougher memorandum policy measures that lead nowhere," SYRIZA-EKM said, noting that "the legislative procedure used has trivialized and downgraded the Parliament".

According to SYRIZA, "the government's hidden agenda of more lay-offs, taxes, wage and pension cuts, was exposed completely in the debate ahead of the omnibus bill vote".

The statement underlined that "the clauses sponsored by (Administrative Reform Minister Antonis) Manitakis, abolishing the temporary court protection of employees and by (Labour Minister Yiannis) Vroutsis, cutting the (Self-employed Professionals Insurance Organization) OAEE pensions, that were withdrawn only to be reintroduced at a later time; as well as, (PASOK leader Evangelos) Venizelos' clause on the hiring of the unemployed, constitute the memorandum canvas on which the government talent will unfold over the next months, utterly razing all rights and conquests of the Greek people."

SYRIZA accused the prime minister of hiding from the Greek Parliament, in panic and completely unable to justify the catastrophic impact of the memorandum, which he was insisting that he would renegotiate.

"There is no room to continue on the same catastrophic path of the memorandums. The memorandum is incompatible with economic growth, investments and the social state, and as such it should become a thing of the past, together with its supporters," the SYRIZA statement concluded.

[03] State overdue debt repayment to the private sector totals 3.7 bln euros

In a statement, the Greek minister underlined that an overdue debt repayment process accelerated in April, raising the value of repaid debt to the private sector to 3.7 billion euros in the period from December 2012 to the end of April.

Staikouras said that around 77.5 pct of demands have been fulfilled so far, adding that demands worth around 1.1 billion euros were currently under evaluation.

Final payments to the private sector totaled 736 million euros in April, sharply up from an average sum of 430 million euros per month in the first quarter of the year.

The money distributed to the real economy totalled 2.2 billion euros in the first four months of 2013, and the ministry said this positive trend of debt repayment will continue in May.

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