N. Papathanasis for natural gas: There is no provision for power outages

“A total of 1.1 billion euros is coming in August to support households and businesses. We continue to support households and businesses, within the fiscal space we have. We have to keep the forces needed for the next day, you saw how in the crisis of pandemic, we said that we knew how deep the crisis would be and we kept our strength”.

This was noted by the Deputy Minister of Development and Investments, Nikos Papathanasis, speaking this morning on the ANT1 television station.

“From the first moment, from the start of the pandemic and now with the energy crisis, we have been supporting our fellow citizens and businesses and now we actually have the suspension of the readjustment clause and we are returning to pre-crisis tariffs,” said Mr. Papathanasis.

Regarding the developments with natural gas and Russia’s attitude, Mr. Papathanasis said “we have to anticipate even the worst possible scenario, that is why we are making Greece an energy hub”, while being asked if we will also have measures announced in Greece other countries to reduce electricity consumption, he said that “the recommendations that need to be made have been made, the programs for replacing devices are running. We must all be careful in the use of air conditioners in the summer”, while he was categorical about the possibility of planned power outages, saying that “there is no provision for rotating power outages”.

For the development law

Asked about the entry into force of the new development law, Mr Papathanasis said “the first part is already ‘in the air’, many are preparing by going to the banks. Can some combine the development law with the Recovery Fund and have a loan with a very low interest rate and to have a subsidy for 70% of the project they submit”.

As he noted, “the perimeter is really narrow for someone to receive loans, we are working together with the Ministry of Finance to widen this perimeter”, noting also that within the next two weeks other parts of the development law will have been “opened”, such as this for agritourism.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, 50 billion have been given to support businesses. The measures finally worked, we see it because in the midst of the pandemic we have a reduction in unemployment and in fact while there is a shortage of personnel in Tourism”, pointed out Mr. Papathanasis, adding that there are permanent programs for the training of the unemployed, saying characteristically that “a program for “green training” is starting that concerns 80,000 unemployed people and we have specialized programs for regions of Western Macedonia, Megalopolis and for islands”.

As he claimed, “thousands of checks are carried out every day in the market, the fines have now reached millions of euros and companies that are illegal are also being sealed. Because we had the checks, the supply chain also worked smoothly and we met the needs of basic necessities very quickly “.