April 15, 2011
Crisis-hit Greece announced plans to sell a key stake in public electricity company as part of a massive privatization and cost-cutting program, designed to reduce the country's borrowings even further and avoid a forced restructuring of the national debt.
The widely anticipated announcement Friday came as markets are once again focusing on the scale of the task facing the Greek government, a task many commentators think is doomed to failure. There is a growing view in the markets that the country will have to renegotiate with its creditors to get a more favorable deal.
Greece's debt crisis, which led to it being the first country using the euro to be bailed out last year, will take years to fix and investors are wondering whether the country can deliver the adjustment required without even more outside help.
Prime Minster George Papandreou conceded that times will remain very tough and that the painful cuts made in 2010 following the bailout were only the start of the country's wide-ranging reform program.
The measures outlined Friday in a 62-page document are worth euro23 billion ($33 billion) in savings through 2015 -- two years beyond his government's mandate.
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