The head of Greece privatization fund (HRADF) on Thursday was quoted by Reuters as saying that the goal for privatizations in the still bailout-dependent country for this year and 2018 is nearly six billion euros.
According to the news agency, new HRADF president Lila Tsitsogiannopoulou broke down the figure into two billion euros for 2017 and 3.5 billion euros in 2018, a figure that takes into account the sale of 30 percent of shares of the Athens International Airport still held by the state.
Upcoming privatizations include the remaining 5-percent stake held by the state in the previously state-run telephony utility (OTE), now controlled and managed by Deutsche Telekom.
In the face of proverbial modern Greek “red tape” and bureaucratic “hiccups”, Tsitsogiannopoulou expressed a view that the delayed Helleniko real estate development project will commence by the end of the year – i.e. a concession payment flowing into state coffers.
The first bailout program between institutional creditors and Greece, as far back as February 2011, envisioned proceeds from privatizations in Greece reaching 50 billion euros, a figure that subsequently proved utterly unreachable.
