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To gather state finances and reduce outlay, PM of Greece George Papandreou has decided to proceed with mergers and closures of hundreds of organizations in the public sector. The first decisions was taken yesterday for merger or closure of 102 organizations. 

"Before falling, as everybody thinks, we will turn the country upside down and then you will see who will win the elections" says one of the ministers for Ethnos newspaper. The first step is drawing up the bill in upcoming days and then another 250 organizations will be merged or disbanded by the end of 2010. During the meeting it became clear that there are about 10,000 enterprises - organizations and agencies, half of which do not work. 

In order to identify all organizations, every two weeks ministerial meetings will be organized, so that by the end of four years in office the government will have purified of "parasitic" organizations. 

Parallel to this the privatization of state enterprises and allowing shareholders to participate in them will continue. According to reliable sources, the number of employees in the public sector will also decrease dramatically - no contract will be renewed and only full time employees will be given the opportunity to transfer to another government organization. 

The project to shrink the state administration and organizations, which the government has undertaken is titanic. "The shrunk" state is a card which is needed by Mr. Papandreou in his negotiations with the EU and the International Monetary Fund. But according to observations some ministers and Chief Secretary to the Government are delaying, so the Prime Minister has instructed S. Litras to control and accelerate the pace of the mergers. 

The participation of each of the ministers in this attempt to "refresh" the State will be one of the criteria under which they will be evaluated. So far the ready plans for mergers belong to the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Labor, Interior, Economy and Finance. The ministry of Labor will merge dozens of pension insurance funds, the Ministry of Agriculture will merge all the control centers and certification of breeding materials and control of fertilizers and will invented a new framework for agricultural cooperatives. 

One part of the companies that are merging are the fishery stations in Pella, Yanena, Drama, Preveza, and the so-called state farms will stop functioning, which are in Alexandroupoli, Arta, Evinohoriou. The seeds control station in Athens will be removed, the State Law Institute will also be closed down, the two construction buildings of permanent officers to the military air forces and naval fleet will be removed, the pension insurance funds of aviation maritime fleet, the army will be merged. The National visual acoustic archive will merge with the Institute for visual acoustic means. The three services for press and communications will merge with the General Secretariat of Communications and Chief Secretariat for information.