Greece’s parliament passed a budget of continued austerity, as mandated by the country’s creditors, but which forecasts robust growth for next year.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said it would mark Greece’s “final exit” from its nearly decade-long financial crisis.
The budget adds more than 1 billion euros (US$1.056 billion) in new taxes, mostly indirect taxes on items from phone calls to alcohol. It also cuts spending by more than 1 billion euros.
The budget was backed by the left-dominated ruling coalition and opposed by all other parties. It passed by a vote of 152 to 146 on Saturday.
Despite the continued austerity, Tsipras said that next year would be a “landmark year” with 2.7 percent economic growth.
He underlined that his government achieved a primary surplus this year — excluding debt servicing — more than double the original forecast and defended his decision to give a total of 617 million euros this Christmas to some 1.6 million low-income pensioners, replacing a holiday bonus scrapped by Greece’s bailout creditors.
Tsipras also said that an assessment of Greece’s third bailout program would be completed soon, without additional austerity measures.
However, there are those who believe that the budget’s growth estimate is exaggerated.
The Greek Budget Office has said that the combination of extra taxes and spending cuts will “in the short term” have “a recessionary effect.”
In addition Greek Minister of Finance Euclid Tsakalotos confirmed to parliament that the IMF demands additional measures, including wage and pension cuts, worth 4.5 billion euros starting in 2019, as well as public sector layoffs.
Greek opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Tsipras’ handout to the pensioners was a desperate move and that the prime minister was preparing a so-called “heroic exit” through early elections that he is bound to lose.
Tsipras said that electons would take place as scheduled, in 2019.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure