A comprehensive package of interventions for banks will be announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Sunday, according to the Finance Ministry spokesman, who said there was justified public outrage over supplies.

“We are not falling from the clouds, nor do we live in another world. We are all experiencing the same situation. We have made interventions, but on the other hand, even more is needed. So what the Prime Minister will announce on Sunday responds to the justified indignation and irritation of citizens in the area of supplies (of banks) and not only,” he said in an interview with ERT today, adding:

“It is a comprehensive package of interventions that will be announced by the Prime Minister that also has to do with procurement. It also has to do with giving quicker easier and cheaper loans to SMEs, through the intensification of competition that we are constantly trying, and with the establishment of the fifth banking pillar and with the possibility of granting microcredit by non-banking institutions, it will also be in the mortgage segment, where there the banks have about 22,000 properties, which they are not throwing them on the market, while they can do so. And we will find ways so that any bureaucratic hurdles can be overcome.”

Pointed out, among other things, that “And of course, there is the serious possibility of increasing the ENFIA for those properties that the banks own and do not put them on the market. To a significant percentage, so that it will act as a disincentive, as a political pressure to return these properties.”

Asked whether we will have a “gentleman’s agreement” with the bankers or a legislative intervention or both, Mr.Tsapalos replied “[…] it can be both, always within the framework of the law, within the margin given to us by the legislation, both European and national, but primarily within the framework of an agreement that we want to make with the banks. Because we live in a serious country, I think that the banks themselves understand that it is not in their interests to have 10 million Greeks who have complaints, resentment, and inconvenience from the procurement part. We are already in talks obviously, there is a good climate and we will come up with that package of measures, negotiations are still going on, which will be presented on Sunday.”

“Our priority is indeed on the so-called people’s supplies. That’s what we want to address,” he stressed.