Privatisations to the tune of 50bil are our own goal, not the IMF's

“The Troika has overstepped the boundaries” said the Minister of Finance, Mr.Papakostantinou, in his first public response on the issue that arose last week with the liquidation of 50 billion euros of public property.

He mentioned that the goal of 50 bil.euros is ambitious yet realistic, and explained that it is the goal of the government and not the Troika’s demand. “It is a goal that will be fulfilled long after 2013, when the IMF agreement ends”.

The Minister said that the opposition parties are just trying to impress the public with irrelevant commentary and stated that ND leader Mr.Samaras stated that “we should get income by liquidating public property” on July 7^th,2010.

The party of ND reacted intensely via representative Mr.Manolis Kefalogiannis, who stated that “there is no question of the Memorandum to be found in our statements. We had very specific proposals that had to do with the commercial utilisation of a small part of public real estate and a privatisation programme to sponsor directly contemporary forms of pre-financing, the so-called "bridge financing", in order to reduce the debt. This has very little to do with the logic of selling everything that was demonstrated by the Prime Minister in New York. The Minister is lying in Parliament, but it is not the first time” said Mr.Kefalogiannis.

“We do not start with suspicions like you do, claiming you wanted to sell out the country. However we do say that someone who states that we can bring in income of 50 bil.euros from state property without taking other measures, is making this particular measure an obligation to the IMF”