Greece's creditors back in Athens this week


(MENAFN- AFP) Greece and its international creditors are due this week to resume talks in Athens over reforms demanded from the debt-ridden government in exchange for bailout funds, the finance ministry said Monday.

Hours later, leading union GSEE said it was calling a general strike on November 12 against the measures.

"Workers and unions cannot and must not remain inactive in view of the criminal measures applied now and in future," GSEE said in a statement.

The European Commission's Declan Costello, the European Central Bank's Rasmus Rueffer, Nicola Giammarioli from the European Stability Mechanism and Delia Velculescu of the International Monetary Fund are expected in Athens on Tuesday as mission chiefs for the creditor organisations.

They are to meet Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and other Greek officials, local media said.

It will be the team's first visit to Greece since left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras returned to power after a snap vote on September 20.

The negotiators were in Athens in late July, after Greece agreed with its creditors on a new loan in exchange for painful economic reforms.

Greece's parliament has since adopted some of the reforms -- most recently tougher terms for tax evasion and a suppression of early retirement loopholes.

A daunting overhaul of the country's struggling pensions system is expected next month.

And the leftist Greek government has pledged to carry out a number of privatisations that it had previously opposed.

The head of Greece's state privatisation agency Taiped this weekend said binding offers for the Piraeus port authority, the agency that runs the main Greek harbour's tourism and commercial activity, are expected by early December.

A similar process for the port of Thessaloniki is expected by the end of March, Taiped chief Stergios Pitsiorlas told Kathimerini on Sunday.

The agency also hopes to conclude talks with German airport operator Fraport for the privatisation of Greek regional airports by December, he said.

Under the July deal, Athens agreed to more public spending cuts in return for a three-year, 86 billion euro ($96 billion) EU bailout -- its third since 2010 -- which prevented it crashing out of the eurozone.

Short of cash, Greece was given in August a first tranche of 13 billion euros to help it meet payments owed to the ECB and the IMF.


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