More taxes and hikes included in new austerity measures list

The meeting held between Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, Economy Minister George Stathakis and Alternate Finance Minister Giorgos Chouliarakis and the representatives of the institutions concluded in Athens on Wednesday evening without reaching any conclusions.

According to finance ministry’s officials, the meeting discussed the process through which the negotiations will reach a draft agreement in the next few days.

However, the IMF does not make a step back insisting that the measures proposed by the Greek government are not efficient to reach the required targets. As Mr. Euclid Tsakalotos stated, Europeans lenders will prepare a draft without the IMF and another one with the IMF, including the measures they agree and those they disagree. With both drafts, Mr. Tsakalotos will start a new round of negotiations adding and removing measures from the list hoping to reach an agreement.

The list of new measures, though, keeps getting bigger and bigger until Sunday, when Mr. Tsakalotos hopes, as he said, to finalize the agreement drafts.

According to information, the measures submitted by the Greek side include, reduction in tax-free threshold, increase in tax rate on farmers’ income at 15% instead of 13%, tax hike in rental income, hikes in special fuel consumption fees, gabling games and mobile phone fees, excise tax hike on cigarettes, reduction in military expenditure by 400 million euros and imposing tax on bank checks.