Libération: “Greece is selling whatever it can in order to reduce its debt.”

“Greece is selling whatever it can in order to lighten the debt due to the innumerable demands of its creditors.” So writes the journalist Nathalie Dubois in the article titled ‘La Grèce vend tout, les Grecs vent debout’ (Greece sells all, Greeks in the wind), reported on by Kathimerini here (link in Greek).  

Ms Dubois outlines the extensive catalogue of state assets that the HRADF is looking to sell: “38 airports, the Public Power Corporation, thermal springs, 700 kilometers of motorway, 100 ports, hotels, a castle and 2000 square meters of land in Corfu, hundreds of acres of sea front property…”

However she notes that the ‘programme is not advancing due to delays or failures while public opposition is growing.”

Targets for the asset sell off by the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) have been consistently revised downwards. As the Libération article writes, the initial ‘unrealistic’ troika target of 50 billion euros in revenue by 2020 has been cut by more than half, with the country’s lenders now forecasting 22.3 billion. However to date only 3 billion has been collected and that with difficulty.

However even many of the privatizations described as ‘mature’ by the HRADF are anything but.

A key example is the Water Utility of Thessaloniki (EYATH) to which public opposition has been fierce. In a recent unofficial referendum held in parallel with the first round of municipal elections (and which the government did its utmost to block) 98% of 200,000 participants voted against the move.

The HRADF was looking to sell a controlling state in the utility to one of two intrested strategic investors approved by the fund in May 2013 – namely the consortia Suez / Ellaktor and Merokot /G. Apostolopoulos / Miya / Terna Energy. The qualified bidders were in the process of submitting binding offers which was to be completed by June 30th. However the process has now effectively been frozen according to Capital.gr (link in Greek).

This is mainly due to the fact that the Council of State – the country’s highest administrative court, recently ruled that a similar sale of the Athens Water Utility (EYDAP) was unconstitutional raising major doubts about the EYATH privatization.

In the Libération article the president of the HRADF Konstantinos Maniatopoulos was quoted as saying that, “it will be difficult to continue the process for EYATH without taking into account the decision for EYDAP.”

Paris Koukoulopoulos, the deputy minister for Agriculture recently said that the sale would have to be revisited, even going so far as to recognize the result of the unofficial referendum which the government had done its best to ignore, indicating government cohesion over the privatization process may be breaking up.

While that is good news for the (many) Greeks that are alarmed at the prospect of their water supply being controlled by for-profit companies – a move that has been nothing but disastrous in other countries (including Germany), the Libération article reports that the IMF is ‘irritated’ at the delays facing the privatization programme which are turning away investors.

To date only three state enterprises have been privatized. The privatization of the DEPA natural gas company fell through when the only bidder – GAZPROM – withdrew its bid.

The article concludes noting the ongoing visit of the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to Greece and the potential for Chinese investments of 6 billion euros.

And it is up to us to note the irony of the hopes of Greece’s IMF-backed privatization programme resting on the shoulders of a communist country.