Feverish preparations ahead of troika’s return to Athens

The prime minister had yet another meeting with government officials on Saturday at his offices at Maximos Mansion, meeting Minister of State Dimitris Stamatis and the premier’s office director Kostas Bouras to schedule the coming week.

At noon the prime minister had also chaired a meeting with the head officers of the state privatisation agency

The Saturday meetings had been preceded by marathon sessions with the government’s economic team on Thursday and Friday, with central Bank of Greece (BoG) governor George Provopoulos participating.

Emerging from the second such meeting chaired by the premier late on Friday, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras assured reporters that the government was ready for the upcoming troika visit.

“We continued and completed yesterday’s (Thursday) meeting on the budget, the better payoff of overdue debts, and, of course, the coming of the troika,” he said.amna

In earlier statements to reporters, Stournaras had denied that there was any “black hole” in state revenues and said that a single tax on real estate was still under discussion, while there would be no extension for the recapitalisation of banks.

The Friday morning meeting of the government’s economic staff came on the heels of marathon session chaired by Samaras on Thursday evening, lasting more than four hours, and concluded discussion on the recapitalisation of the banks, mergers, and the repercussions of the economic crisis in Cyprus.

The prime minister is now scheduled to hold talks next Wednesday evening with the leaders of the two junior partners in his three-party coalition government, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and Democratic Left (DIMAR) leader Fotis Kouvelis, ahead of the return of the troika to Athens and a new round of inspections by Greece’s creditors later the same week.

Samaras’ intention is that solutions will have been found by that time to all the outstanding issues between the Greek government and the troika, especially a controversial mobility programme for public sector staff and the collection of the real estate surtax.

source: ΑΜΝΑ