With all of some 52.5 billion euros ($69 billion)in coming international loans already earmarked to recapitalize banks and pay back bills, Greece’s General Accounting Office has discovered it owes another 2 billion euros ($2.63 billion)to taxpayers in long-overdue refunds.
That’s on top of 756 million euros ($994.8 million) the government had stopped payment on for taxpayers because there wasn’t enough money. There was no word on whether the combined ($3.6 billion) would be paid out because all the coming loan money is already committed, which could leave taxpayers out in the cold.
The discovery comes after another gap in unpaid subsidies, this to the health care organization EOPYY, was found and as pharmacists continue a strike and refusal to accept government insurance because they’ve not been paid either. Greek is slated to pay creditors some 9 billion euros ($11.8 billion) but that doesn’t include the newly-found bills.
Some 1.5 billion ($1.97 billion) will be paid by the end of the year and another 8.5 billion ($11.8 billion) will have been repaid by the end of March, with priority given to the previous tax returns and to retirement lump sums that are being cut 82 percent and will take years to pay, except for workers in the Parliament who will immediately get full payments of up to 160,000 euros ($210,500) and have been exempted from more pay and benefit cuts being extended to other public workers.
(Source: Kathimerini)
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