Athens News Agency: News in English, 07-03-14

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Finmin outlines plan for fund against poverty

[02] Papariga: education law can be overturned

[01] Finmin outlines plan for fund against poverty

Speaking to reporters while presenting the results of the government�s economic policy in the past three years, the Greek minister announced the creation of a special fund to combat poverty in the country, with the aim to manage around 2.0 billion euros by the end of the next five-year period. Alogoskoufis noted that the government�s aim was to further improve pensions, supplementary pensions and unemployment benefits.

However, he stressed that there was no room for complacency in implementing economic policy and noted that one of the greatest challenges facing the Greek economy was the pension system, while he urged the main opposition PASOK party to agree on a consensus on the issue.

Greece has committed itself to protecting the environment, according to decisions taken in a recent EU Summit, and the government aims to achieve balanced budgets by 2012 through a gradual 0.5 pct annual cut of the fiscal deficit as a percentage of the country�s GDP, Alogoskoufis said.

The minister said that the main priorities of economic policy were simplification of management of a Fourth Community Support Framework (2007-2013) and creating a National Commission on tax evasion.

Commenting on the signing of an oil pipeline project linking Greece and Bulgaria on Thursday, the Greek minister said it was a project of great priority for the country as it would upgrade its geopolitical role and positively affect various sectors of the Greek economy.

Alogoskoufis said recent turbulence in world stock markets would not affect the government�s privatisation programme, whose priorities were a further privatisation of Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation (OTE) and flotation of the Postal Savings Bank in the Athens Stock Exchange. Both priorities will be unveiled after the two companies presented their 2006 results, he said.

The Greek minister acknowledged that monopolies were a problem in the Greek market and pledged that the government would continue efforts to effectively deal with them.

Alogoskoufis said the country�s fiscal deficit dropped from 7.8 pct of GDP in 2004 to 2.6 pct in 2006 and noted a decline in the inflation rate, higher exports and reduced unemployment during the three-year period 2004-2006. He noted that growth rates reached 4.3 pct last year, unemployment fell by 8.9 pct of the workforce in 2006 and exports rose to 9.8 pct of GDP over the same year.

The Greek minister underlined the government�s digital strategy aimed to close a digital gap with the rest of Europe. In 2004, 0.1 pct of the population had access to fast Internet. Today, the percentage is 4.5 pct and we hope to reach 7.5 pct by the end of the year, he noted.

[02] Papariga: education law can be overturned

She stressed that there should be a counter-attack by the student and peoples movements for completely free state education.

Outlining her party's positions for universities, Papariga underlined her total opposition to the measures introduced under the new law and said that the positions of main opposition PASOK did not differ significantly from those of the government.

She also slammed the government for exploiting the hooded self-styled anarchists that marred student demonstrations, suggesting that they might even be linked to the police force, and underlined that the police had no right to make a show of force during the student rally taking place on Thursday.

At the same time, she called on students to be even more vigilant in guarding the demonstration against infiltration by violent trouble-makers, while again suggesting that the police had tolerated the actions of the self-styled anarchists before reacting and underlining that KKE was opposed to violence from all quarters, whether these were rioters or police.

Papariga emphasised that violence had been perpetrated against students and said that their legal rights had been violated for the first time in many years.

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