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In his short speech yesterday in the Plenary Session of Parliament, Mr. Staikouras managed to utter at least 8 lies:
Lie 1. The expenses made by the government of ND for the pandemic amount to 24 billion or 13 billion.
Truth: Government spending on the pandemic at the end of October amounts to just 6.7 billion, of which 3.1 billion are loans. This is directly confirmed with the budget execution.
Alchemy 1st. When it says 24 billion, Staikouras adds costs with other measures, such as payment deferrals, but also bank loans and leverage, to create impressions. The question, however, is how much money is actually entering the world.
Alchemy 2. When Mr. Staikouras says 13 billion, he adds to the government expenses the loans granted by the banks through the guarantee fund and the TEPIX.
Lie 2. Under SYRIZA, state funding for the National Health System decreased compared to 2014
Truth: During SYRIZA, public spending on health increased from 4.5% of GDP in 2014 to 5.1% of GDP, an increase of around 1 billion.
Also, how could expenses not have increased when in SYRIZA:
- the uninsured and refugees were covered by the NSS
- opened 127 new primary care structures
- 120 additional ICU beds were created
- 7,000 permanent hires and more than 10,000 hires per contract were made.
It is the SW that in the midst of a pandemic reduces health expenditures by 2021 by 572 million.
Lie 3. ND increases health spending by 786 million due to the pandemic
Truth: The total additional aid from the state budget to the public health system by 2020 will be less than 400 million. The country ranks eighth in Europe in terms of health spending in the face of a pandemic, and all countries lower than us have much older data (OECD). This means that we are actually at the bottom of Europe in healthcare spending in tackling the pandemic.
Lie 4. Unemployment fell in the country amid a pandemic
Truth: The number of workers in the country has decreased. This year, 11 months are the worst for employment since 2012. New jobs are down by 40,500. It should be noted that suspended employees are registered as employees.
Alchemy: From September 2019 to September 2020, the economically inactive increased significantly, that is, people who were not looking for work before. This likely put pressure on Staikouras’ clandestine management and creative mathematics.
Lie 5: No EU country proceeds to restore workers’ wages as requested by SYRIZA.
Truth: The state replenishes workers’ wages in France and the Czech Republic by 100%, in Sweden by 82% to 96%, in the Netherlands by 90%.
Lie 6: Low wage workers and people in Greece had the third highest income protection in all of Europe thanks to government measures.
Truth: 1. Our country’s workers are experiencing the third largest income reduction – AFTER GOVERNMENT MEASURES – in Europe. Only Croatia and Cyprus have a larger reduction than we do. (Eurostat). 2. Overall, our country’s citizens are experiencing the second largest income decline in Europe. 3. Low-wage workers in Greece have the second largest income decline in Europe.
Lie 7: SYRIZA never achieved its goals
Truth: SYRIZA met all fiscal targets by closing the evaluations, so it completed the program by ending the memoranda. Apparently, Staikouras is confused with the previous ND government, which failed to close any evaluations, plunged the country further into memoranda, delivered an irreversibly derailed program, while at the same time plunged the country into recession, thrown the unemployment and there were levels of wages, pensions and income.
Lie 8 and the best: At the level of nine months 2020, the image of Greece is better than the European average
Truth: Greece’s 9-month recession is 8.5%, while the Eurozone average is 7.5%, bringing us to the fourth worst position in Europe.
What is outrageous is that the diagram presented yesterday by Mr Staikouras in Parliament shows exactly this. There are 4 possibilities:
- He did not read the diagram before submitting it.
- He read it and was confused.
- He read it and didn’t understand it because he doesn’t know what better means when we talk about recession and thinks that the bigger the recession, the better. Unless he thinks -7.5% is worse than -8.5%, which we don’t want to believe.
- He deliberately tries to mislead his listeners, believing that no one will bother with what he has testified But then we’ll talk about data falsification, for which we blamed the government from the beginning.
None of the 4 possibilities is positive for a Minister of Finance. But the next time you enter parliament you will have to start your speech by saying which of the 4 is valid.
