Beijing concerned about OLP tender delays
No more time should be allowed to be wasted as the competition is intense and business activities cannot wait, a top diplomatic source told Kathimerini in reference to the tender for the majority stake in Piraeus Port Authority (OLP).
“The rivals of Piraeus are moving, and the earlier this outstanding issue is closed, the better it will be for Greek-Chinese relations,” the same source stressed.
These comments come two years after the tender started, six months after assurances by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to his Chinese counterpart in a telephone call, and a month after Tsipras’s meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping in New York, and they constitute a message from Beijing to Athens to avoid any further delays in the OLP privatization procedure in which state Chinese firm Cosco Pacific is participating. The message was expressed on the sidelines of a closed informative meeting held on Friday afternoon by the Chinese Embassy in Athens on the progress of the Sino-Hellenic cooperation.
An embassy spokesman stressed that while the embassy encourages Chinese companies to invest in Greece and participate in sell-off tenders, it is the Greek government that must set developments in motion.
