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Saturday, April 20, 2013
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‘Joint action the only way’ Anastasiades announces raft of measures, calls for more co-operation By Peter Stevenson
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N A PACKED room at the Presidential Palace, in front of ministers, MPs, party leaders, and leading businessmen, President Nicos Anastasiades last night announced measures to help kick-start the economy. At the same time he officially announced the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant. The measures, drawn up by the cabinet during two days of meetings at the beginning of the week, were five-fold and are aimed at helping vulnerable groups, training unemployed individuals, creating new jobs, helping stimulate economic growth and encouraging environmental development, Anastasiades said in a televised address. "Any attempt to gloss over the tough measures imposed upon us [by the troika] would be an indication of weakness in comprehending the real problems society now faces, and a lack of vision and decisiveness from the state in restarting the economy," he said. “The most important thing today is joint action and reaction to the
dire measures we were forced to accept in an attempt to avoid the unthinkable. We will not shy away from the challenges ahead.” Anastasiades said that after discussions, the government would be in a position to adopt a national energy policy which would be completed within the next two weeks. The only policy that he was willing to announce last night was the construction of the LNG plant, he said. During his speech the President referred to the difficult position in which the government had been placed and the dilemmas it faced after the Eurogroup meetings on March 15 and 25. “I do not believe it would be in the country’s best interests to be confrontational. We would be better served through creational cooperation,” he said. He said the committee of inquiry which began yesterday would apportion blame where it was due. He reassured people that the government would show courage in the face of the challenges ahead and would not shirk its responsibilities.
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Finance ministry permanent secretary Christos Patsalides was the first person to testify yesterday in the inquiry into the economic debacle (Christos Theodorides)
'They used atomic bomb to shoot pigeon’ ONE OF Cyprus' most senior civil servants yesterday likened his country's treatment by Germany and the IMF to the shooting of a pigeon with an atomic bomb, saying they had destroyed an economic system that worked. Christos Patsalides, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance, was speaking to a committee inquiry which launched a public hearing yesterday into the circumstances that led to the country’s economic meltdown. He described the international lenders as "forces of occupation" that cared nothing for human rights.
Patsalides took part in the recent bailout negotiations between Cyprus and the European Union and International Monetary Fund. He told the three-man inquiry that an "unrelenting" team of technocrats had dispensed savage fiscal punishment to cash-starved Cyprus. "With the imposition of Germany and the IMF ... they shot a pigeon with an atomic bomb," he said. But the size of the bailout they were discussing, some €17.5 billion, was equivalent to a mere 0.1 per cent of the European Union’s
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