ECONOMY

PPC sees bad debt provisions dropping sharply this year, says CEO

PPC sees bad debt provisions dropping sharply this year, says CEO

Greece's main power utility Public Power Corp. (PPC) will see a sharp drop in provisions for overdue bills this year helped by a repayment scheme launched in April, its chief executive said late on Monday.

PPC, which is 51 percent owned, has been severely hit by soaring provisions for this debt – estimated by market analysts at more than two billion euros – as unpaid bills accumulated from Greeks hit by seven years of austerity-induced recession.

The utility, once a monopoly, reported losses of 103 million euros last year, as bad debt provisions more than doubled to 871 million euros. But provisions will drop considerably this year and PPC will swing back to profit, Chairman and Chief Executive Manolis Panagiotakis told Reuters in an interview.

“Provisions will drop for the year 2016,” Panagiotakis, 68, said from his office in central Athens. “It will be significant…certainly a double-digit percentage one, if not a three-digit one.”

PPC expects that more than 600,000 clients in arrears will have joined in a three-year settlement scheme by the end of the year, compared to 565,000 who have done so until now, and that it could recover about one billion euros from them, Panagiotakis said.

[Reuters]

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