Author Topic: Hundreds of thousands  (Read 7013 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Maik

  • Administrator
  • Forum Deity
  • *****
  • Posts: 35164
Hundreds of thousands
« on: Tuesday, 22 April, 2014 @ 19:45:26 »
Quote
Hundreds of thousands of Greeks apply for 'social dividends'
Scramble for share of budget surplus highlights desperation of Greeks hit by spending cuts since start of debt crisis

Hundreds of thousands of Greeks have applied for so-called "social dividends" that the government has vowed to hand out after recording a primary budget surplus – counted before interest payments.

The conservative-dominated coalition has predicted it will register a surplus of about €2.5bn, in figures due to be confirmed by the EU statistics office on Wednesday.

It has promised benefits including a €500 "bonus" to low income pensioners and members of the police and security services, and by midday on Tuesday 225,000 had applied.

A figure of €2.5bn would be more than three times the 800m the government had originally estimated, but almost all of the political opposition has argued that the notion of a primary surplus is a fiction cooked up by a government that has not only trimmed the books savagely but failed to include factors such as state debts to suppliers.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/apr/22/greece-social-dividends-primary-budget-surplus-debt-austerity