Greece’s opposition parties harshly criticized the government for the high taxes included in the 2016 draft budget which has been under discussion in the parliament’s economics committee since Wednesday.
“The measures included in the budget show an ideological leftist obsession in maintaining the existing and adding new taxes,” New Democracy’s rapporteur Christos Staikouras said during the debate, adding the draft includes more than 2 billion euros in taxes which will destroy the private economy.
Golden Dawn rapporteur, Ilias Panagiotaros, said the draft budget undermines primary production and lays the groundwork for the destruction of the country.
“It is the toughest budget of the last few years,” said the Democratic Coalition’s spokesman Yiannis Koutsoukos, and the Communist Party of Greece said through its spokesman Nikos Karathanasopoulos, it will vote against the budget and accused the government that it is sacrificing the interests of the people for the sake of corporate profitability and capitalist growth.
Potami spokesman Spyros Danellis said in his address that “economic data remain grim” and noted that the negative indexes recorded in the budget is not the result of our “bad partners,” but of the destructive 6-month administration of SYRIZA and ANEL.
Taking the floor, the spokesman of junior coalition party ANEL, Dimitris Kammenos, said the write-down of Greek government bonds destroyed the Greek banks, adding that today’s government is the only one that planned a development bank which, along with the privatization program and European funds can help growth.
The spokesman of the Centrists’ Union, Marios Georgiadis, called for a unity government with the participation of technocrats, asked the government to stop the funding of the public utilities’ social security funds and abolish pensions larger than 1,500 euros.
(Source: ANA-MPA)
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