By G. Kampourakis
[email protected]
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took the stage before an overwhelmingly partisan audience on Friday evening to promise changes in bruising tax rates that his government passed in 2016, and which were implemented over the past two years.
Speaking at his ruling SYRIZA party’s central committee meeting, and with the lengthy address carried live by the state broadcaster, the formerly anti-bailout and anti-austerity Tsipras promised tax breaks for the middle and lower classes which will be linked with future growth of the economy.
He also appeared confident that conditional “positive measures” will be taken in 2019 – an election year – and 2020.
Tsipras spoke days after main opposition New Democracy (ND) leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged that if elected his center-right party will slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.
The leftist political leader’s leitmotif of 2018 being a “milestone year” was prominent in the speech, without however, references to a “clean exit” from the bailout era after August 2018 – when the current and third consecutive adjustment program officially ends.
Tsipras’ address also came in the wake of a very high-profile statement by IMF chief Christine Lagarde to German broadcaster ARD, who indirectly affirmed that creditors’ supervision of the Greek economy will not end with the conclusion of the third bailout.
