ATHENS — Greek officials sought Thursday to deflect reports that administrators of the euro zone’s main bailout fund had proposed that an outside company manage the sale of state-owned real estate.
Reports in the Greek news media and The Financial Times indicated that officials of the bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism,had made the proposal in a study commissioned late last year by euro zone officials.
Under the plan, the management company would seek to speed up Greece’s program of raising money through the sale of state assets. The European Stability Mechanism finances much of the bailout lending to Greece.
A Greek Finance Ministry official described the report on the bailout fund as “one of a series of working papers and studies” that may or may not be considered in discussions between the Greek government and its so-called troika of international lenders: the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity according to custom, would not comment on the possible political or social repercussions of any attempt to place the privatization program under foreign control.
But analysts said it would be hard to push through such a plan over likely objections within Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s shaky governing coalition — not to mention the political opposition, restive labor unions and an austerity-weary public.
Greece’s effort to sell state-owned assets has fallen far short of the revenue targets set by the country’s international creditors. An original target of 50 billion euros ($66 billion) by 2016 was revised down to 19 billion euros, then to 15 billion euros. And Greece seems certain to miss its 2.5 billion euro target for this year by about 1 billion euros.
The privatization program has faced many problems.
The authorities this month dismissed Stelios Stavridis, the chairman of the state privatization fund, after it became known that he had ridden on the private jet of a businessman involved in the private buyout of a stake in Greece’s state gambling company. That sale was the country’s first major privatization deal. Mr. Stavridis had been the privatization agency’s third chairman in just over a year, and it is currently without a leader.
Late last year, the Eurogroup Working Group, a body that advises euro zone finance ministers, asked the European Stability Mechanism to prepare a report on how to improve the effort. “The main point of the report is to maximize the value of state-owned real estate assets in Greece by making them more attractive for investors,” a European Stability Mechanism spokesman said on Thursday.
“The benefit of privatization is to generate resources for Greece to help overall development and pay back its own debt faster, and thus reduce the burden on the population of still higher taxes and contributions,” said the spokesman, who gave his comments on the basis of not being identified by name.
Even though the report has not yet received any official political backing, its conclusions are expected to help frame discussions with Greek authorities when the three lenders visit Athens in September to assess how well Greece is complying with fiscal targets and economic reforms under the terms of bailouts totaling about 240 billion euros.
A focus of the September trip is expected to be the lagging privatization program, as well as Greece’s underachieving tax-collection efforts.
Simon O’Connor, a spokesman for the European Commission, said during a news conference on Thursday in Brussels that talks soon would encourage Greece to improve the privatization process. Even so, Mr. O’Connor tried to minimize any potential fallout of the proposals to Greek authority.
“The ownership of this program is, and absolutely must remain, in the hands of the Greek government,” said Mr. O’Connor. Proposals for outsourcing the Greek privatization process “have absolutely not been endorsed by the commission or by the Eurogroup in any way.”
Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras insisted on Thursday that Greece was on track for economic recovery, having made “huge progress,” and he told Parliament that the government’s privatization program was being pursued “based on the public interest, the promotion of healthy competitiveness and the creation of new jobs.”
Only “speculators and willing idiots” oppose the government’s effort to save the country, he said.
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