Payment of state arrears picks up pace
The pace at which the state is paying its arrears is picking up and covering a significant amount of lost ground, Alternate Finance Minister Christos Staikouras announced on Monday.
“The state continued paying its corporations’ overdue debts to private parties in March, when final payments reached 790 million euros, which was above the program’s expected monthly average,” Staikouras said in a statement.
This compared with payments from December to February (almost two-and-a-half months) that came to just 730 million euros. As a result, the total amount of arrears paid has exceeded 1.5 billion euros.
“From the start of the process in late December until the end of March, the Finance Ministry completed the funding of demands amounting to 3.2 billion euros. Almost all ministries have received funding [to make the payments], given they had agencies that owed money to private parties. The lag seen in final payments by funded state bodies to the private sector is rapidly being covered, as the institutional and operational problems are being resolved,” Staikouras added, forecasting that, judging by the current progress, April will see an even higher rate of growth in arrears payments.
