Although it has achieved little in the past five years, Greece’s privatisation programme is beginning to show signs of life. The Greek government appears to retain its distaste for selling state-owned assets, but it knows it must press ahead if it is to keep its bail-out programme on track and remain in the eurozone.
In 2011, as part of Greece’s original bail-out by the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the then socialist government said it would sell $50bn of assets by 2015. No one believed it at the time, and proceeds to date have totalled a mere $3bn. The sales have included gambling franchises and property but nothing that could be described as a major asset.
