PM: Gov’t has lots of work before end of year

The government has a lot of work before the end of the year, Prime Minister George Papandreou stressed while addressing a meeting of the cabinet that he chaired on Friday.

The prime minister placed emphasis on a number of important draft bills that are due to be tabled in Parliament before the New Year and are to be discussed in meetings of the cabinet over the rest of this month.

Papandreou said that the government had to convince Greek society through these acts of legislation and the 2011 budget that it will guide the country safely out of the crisis and make all the necessary reforms.

Among others, he highlighted significant changes that had occurred since the last meeting of the government ministers, such as the eruption of the crisis in Ireland and the issue of extending the repayment period for Greece’s 110-billion-euro loans from the European Union and the IMF.

Stressing that the country had prospects, Papandreou said that the government had met its commitments and demonstrated its reliability.

He also pointed out that, had the public deficit really been just 6 percent of GDP as originally claimed by the previous New Democracy government, this would have now been eradicated.

The premier termed 2011 the year of great reforms, expressing certainty that the government can achieve its goals next year as well, as it also did in 2010.

Papandreou said that “these days another difficult cycle closed for the country” and indeed “it closed with success and optimism for the future.”

He referred to the country’s recent evaluation, stressing that “it was positive” and proved that “we are not merely on the right path, but that we are fulfilling our targets one by one and even more so.”

The prime ministerr called on ministers to contribute so that “this message will multiply” and be understood by the Greek people, so that the feeling of trust and confidence that they need will be consolidated.

Papandreou rejected crisiticism by certain international news agencies, that Greece did not achieve the target of reducing the deficit.

He said that, on the contrary, “we achieved it and even more so, since the target was its decrease by 5.5 units and we reduced it by 6 units.”

Papandreou expressed his belief that the changes that will take place in the near future are “more accessible politically” since, as he said, “now, we no longer have the generalised decrease of salaries and pensions that, of course, was a very difficult decision politically.”