They will seize wages from SOEs that do not provide evidence

The Finance minister is getting ready to devise unprecedented methods and drastic measures to enforce the governmental line for strict austerity.

While S&P were downgrading the perspective of the Greek economy and on the eve of the upcoming Eurostat announcements (which will confirm the Proto Thema report since December that has already revealed that the 2010 deficit was not 9,4% but actually reached 10% of the GDP) on the need for new measures to cover an additional 1 billion euros, Papakonstantinou issued a decision/notice to the governors of SOEs and hundreds of other public bodies... According to it, if they continue with the «guerilla war» and do not follow the memorandum to the letter, he will stop paying them, depriving them even of their salary.

As Proto Thema revealed in January, the Finance ministry leadership is extremely angry with the presidents and CEOs of about 500 state bodies and entities.

And even though six months have passed since the adoption of control measures and the monitoring of their financial data, the latter appear unwilling to implement austerity measures in the sector of their responsibility. Also, they do not provide information on their costs or are not reducing the salaries of their employees, as required by the 2010 Act for horizontal cuts.

These entities (SOEs, hospitals, pension funds, local authorities, public entities, etc.) are threatened with suspension of funding and strict penalties if their governors do not send monthly (instead of quarterly as it is today) budget-report details, balance sheets and liabilities of all entities of public or private law that belong to the government.

It should be noted that of the 1.601 entities listed in the general governing, only 1196 had available data at the end of 2010...

Budgets and credits will be cut

With the new decree, the entities of the General Government that do not provide the expected data will not be subsidized by the State Budget. If they keep on delaying in sending the data, the ministry will be imposing fines and freezing corporate accounts.

The officials in charge of the agencies will be sending the monthly statements within 12 days from the end of each month. These will be checked for completeness and correctness by the officials of the relevant ministries to which these entities belong, and will reach the Treasury by the 16h of each month.

This report will serve as a certificate and justification for the imbursement of grants.

Shocking fines

The State Budget will not subsidize entities that have not submitted the required information. Failure to report within the given time limits will lead to the imposition the following penalties:

1. For delays of over 15 days, a fine will be imposed on the President or the General Director, as appropriate, equal to 1/25 of their monthly salary or their total compensation for each additional day of delay, by decision of the Finance minister.

2. For delays longer than one month, the Finance Ministry will be binding any revenue of the institution in question from the Public Investment Program or the Regular Budget, at the rate of 50% of the annual estimated amount, until the submission of the required data. The above arrangement does not apply to income or expenses related to the implementation of projects financed by the European Union and for which proposals are approved by the relevant bodies.