COSCO
took full control of the port of Piraeus, close to Athens,
last August.
Following up on the previous post here are three articles about Chinese shipping company COSCO getting control over the Port of Piraeus. The first article includes a short interview with Stergio Pitsiorlas, Chairman of Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund.
This is an old article but it's still interesting:
For sale: Greek islands, hotels and historic sites
Stergios Pitsiorlas, of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund.
By Helena Smith
In Greece today, government power comes with few trappings. Unable to tap capital markets and dependent wholly on international aid,
the debt-stricken country’s senior officials are acrobats in a
tightrope act. They are placating creditors, whose demands at times seem
insatiable, and citizens, whose shock is never far away.
Few know this better than Stergios Pitsiorlas, the head of Greece’s
privatisation agency. The agency’s asset portfolio – readily available
online – goes some way to explaining why. A catalogue of beaches,
islands, boutique hotels, golf courses, Olympic venues and historic
properties in Plaka on the slopes beneath the ancient Acropolis, it
could be a shopping list for the scenery in a movie – rather than a list
of possessions that Athens is under immense pressure to offload.
In the coming months, the list will grow as the contours of a “super
fund” – established to expedite the sale of ailing utilities and
state-owned properties – take shape. Read the full article here
Nurses shout anti-government slogans during a protest (Picture: Reuters)Around 180 million public sector workers took to the streets
of India yesterday in what is considered to be the largest strike in
human history.
Thousands of state-run banks, government offices and factories were
closed as people protested against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
economic policies.
Public transport was heavily disrupted by the walkout that was organised by ten trade unions on Friday, reports Aljazeera.
State bank employees, school teachers, postal workers, miners and
construction workers, were among the crowd demanding that Modi’s plans
be dropped.
Why are people striking?
Modi revealed plans to push for greater privatisation.
If imposed, the government would close unproductive factories, raise
the cap on foreign investments and sell off stakes in state-run
companies.
But the unions want to see the plans dumped.
They also want social security and healthcare guaranteed for all and an increase in minimum wage.
Quoting another source, Common Dreams of September 2, 2016:
Al Jazeera reports that union
officials "said about 180 million workers, including state bank
employees, school teachers, postal workers, miners, and construction
workers, were participating, but the figure could not be independently
verified."
Prof. Jayati Ghosh, a development
economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi," said Modi's changes
had built on a 25-year neoliberal reform agenda that had left workers
across the country worse off," according to the Guardian.
"Less than four percent of workers in India
come under labor protection, and even those protections have become
more and more eroded. There's a general sense that instead of targeting
poverty they are targeting the poor, and there has been a real running
down of spending on essential public services," Ghosh told the Guardian.
As a kid I liked numbers and the sound of strings. I considered studying engineering but chose social sciences because of my interest in people. I combine a theoretical interest with a practical, social approach which brought me to the sphere of policy research. I am interested in reducing the disparity between poor and rich, between the powerful and the less powerful.
In 1973 and 1982 I lived in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, I was able to create an international forum to discuss the functioning of the international monetary system and the debt crisis, the Forum on Debt and Development (FONDAD). I established it with the view that the debt crisis of the 1980s was a symptom of a malfunctioning, flawed global monetary and financial system.
I was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Network on Debt and Development that was established at the end of the 1980s to help put pressure on European policymakers.
In 1990, before the beginning of the Gulf War, I cofounded the Golfgroep, a discussion group about international politics comprising journalists, scientists, politicians and activists that meets regularly.
The website of FONDAD is www.fondad.org
