PROTESTERS TAKE OVER FINANCE MINISTRY IN ATHENS
ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Protesters took over the Finance Ministry developing in Athens Friday morning, hanging a giant banner from the roof calling for a general strike, just as Greece wraps up tough negotiations with international officials on new austerity measures.
About 200 protesters from the communist party-backed PAME union blockaded the entrance to the ministry from dawn, preventing employees from entering. They hung a banner over five stories of the front of the creating and took down the European flag from the top of the ministry, replacing it with their own union flag.
They stated they would continue the blockade for the whole day.
The protest came as specialists from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had been wrapping up a review of Greece’s implementation of economic reforms in return for €110 billion ($159.06 billion) in rescue loans from the EU and IMF.
The 3 bodies, identified collectively as the troika, were to issue a statement on their review later Friday, officials stated. The review is critical towards determining whether or not Greece will obtain a fifth tranche, worth €12 billion, of bailout loans agreed last year.
Greece has so far received €53 billion from last May’s rescue deal.
Greek officials had been also completing tough negotiations on the details of much more austerity measures necessary to make certain the country can stay away from defaulting on its debts. The original bailout plan envisaged the country being able to tap bond investors next year, but with the interest rates on Greek bonds remaining exceptionally high, that appears increasingly unlikely.
Last month, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou announced remedial austerity measures worth about €6.4 billion for this year, in order to meet the target of lowering the deficit to 7.5 percent of gross domestic product, from 10.five percent in 2010.
Although €4.8 billion of that quantity has already been announced, the government was expected to outline details of the remaining €1.6 billion in the coming days. It is also expected to give details of a 2012-15 midterm austerity program, with the details to be announced soon after a Cabinet meeting in the coming days, officials stated.
Prime Minister George Papandreou was heading to Luxembourg later Friday for emergency talks with Jean-Claude Juncker, who is head of the group of 17 eurozone finance ministers as nicely as Luxembourg’s prime minister. Juncker lately criticized Greece for becoming slow in cutting debt and reforming the public sector.
Greece’s woes have been compounded by repeated downgrades of its credit ratings — Moody’s warned Wednesday that the country had a 50-50 chance of defaulting on its debts.
On Friday, Moody’s also cut the ratings of eight Greek banks — National Bank of Greece, Eurobank, Alpha, Piraeus, Agricultural Bank of Greece, Attica, Emporiki and General Bank of Greece.
The agency stated “the rising likelihood of a sovereign debt restructuring” could directly impact Greek banks by lowering the value of the government bonds they hold as well as eroding their funding sources.