Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 17-05-05

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

CONTENTS

[01] PM Tsipras to SYRIZA parliamentary group: Greece will stand again on its feet

[02] Reaching a comprehensive agreement on Greece in May 22nd remained a goal, European official says

[03] HRADF elects Lila Tsitsogiannopoulou as new head

[04] US ambassador Pyatt visits Chios

[01] PM Tsipras to SYRIZA parliamentary group: Greece will stand again on its feet

He underlined that this government has brought offset measures, the return of the collective agreements, labour normality, and measures on the debt adding that we will be the ones who will implement them.

Tsipras also stressed that this government will get the country out of the supervision status.

"Greece will stand again on its feet," he underlined.

"We are now in a position to plan the next day and another productive model, and we won't do it with the institutions, both with the productive and creative forces, as well as the administration, and we have already started doing so," the prime minister stated.

Tsipras also stressed the importance of committment to the reform policy.

Earlier he said that "we are in the most critical turn of our tenure, the most critical moment of the implementation of the mandate we received from the Greek people 19 months ago."

He underlined that we should never forget our target, to get the country out of the memoranda and the sometimes humiliating supervision in the summer of 2018.

We politicized the negotiation, creating allies, we had a plan, we achieved a primary surplus in 2016 eight times higher than the institutions' estimates and 42 times higher than the IMF's estimates, he noted.

Tsipras said that "SYRIZA's political opponents claim that the primary surplus target was achieed because of the strict measures taken. But the truth is that we achieved overperformance because we combated the interwined interests, and the corruption he said and explained: "The creditors are not our friends, they are against us because what they care for is to get their money back. They are our lenders and we forced them to retreat from their initial irrational demands".

The Greek prime minister also noted that we secured offset measures with zero fiscal impact, we secured a balanced ageeement."It is not my intention to hide that we also made compromises as it is always the case with agreements," he stressed.

He underlined that the most important thing of all is that the creditors are forced to proceed with substantial measures on the debt relief so that it is rendered sustainable.

[02] Reaching a comprehensive agreement on Greece in May 22nd remained a goal, European official says

Speaking to reporters, in Brussels, the official said that a technical agreement reached in Athens between Greek authorities and the institutions included a very ambitious package of reforms and noted that in order to conclude a second review of the Greek program, a total of 140 prior actions should be implemented.

He said that 40 of these actions already have been implemented, while around three-quarters of the remaining 100 prior actions needed to be passed by the Greek parliament as a new law. He noted that Greek authorities have pledged to submit and vote a new legislation next week, around May 16, a move that could help the institutions to make a positive assessment at the forthcoming Eurogroup meeting.

He said that disbursement of a loan tranche to Greece would need around four to five weeks after a political agreement was reached in the May 22nd Eurogroup, while the IMF would need more time to decide on its participation in the Greek program, due to its internal procedures.

The official expressed the institutions' and the Eurogroup's satisfaction for Greece's fiscal overperformance and the achievement of a primary surplus surpassing 4.0 pct of GDP in 2016. He attributed this development to the fact that economic conditions were more positive than expected, some reforms implemented after 2015 began bearing fruit and higher one-off revenue.

He expressed the European institutions' confidence that Greece will achieve its fiscal goals for 2017 without additional measures and said there was a small gap between 0.2-0.3 pct for 2018. He noted that European institutions did not see the need for further measures in the period 2019-2020 after the end of the program, however they agreed with an IMF demand for an additional package worth 2.0 pct of GDP. He stressed this agreement was necessary to accelerate completion of the review and added that an additional agreement on a package of counter-measures -including significant social and growth-oriented actions- was also reached.

The European official said a delay in concluding a second review of the program had a negative impact on the Greek economy and said that the European Commission was expected to revise downwards its estimates for economic growth in the country to around 2.0 pct this year from an initial estimate of 2.7 pct.

[03] HRADF elects Lila Tsitsogiannopoulou as new head

The Board of Directors elected Mrs. Lila Tsitsogiannopoulou as Chair of the BoD.

[04] US ambassador Pyatt visits Chios

In a meeting with Chios mayor Manolis Vournous they discussed the management of the refugees and migrants issue as well as the repercussions on the local society and economy. There was a special reference to the timely relations between Chios and the US through the active presence of the Greeks from Chios in US cities.

The schedule of the US envoy visit to Chios was not announced for reasons of security but according to information Pyatt is going to visit in the afternoon the children of "Kivotos" Non-Profit Organisation.

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