Photo: iefimerida.gr
For months now one of the topics of the debate inside Greece has been that it has stopped paying its suppliers. Official data confirm this and the amounts are really impressive, says journalist Giorgos Papous in his article for iefimerida.gr.
Evidence 1: Although they were eager to respond to the call of the Ministry of Finance to begin to repay their outstanding taxes, Greek taxpayers continue to create new obligations to the tax authorities. Taxes amounting to 737 million euro were due in April alone of which the Greeks paid a very small part, resulting in arrears to the amount of 602 million euro in that particular month. The total value of previous and new debts to the tax services is over 77 billion euro. If the obligations to the customs are added, the amount will exceed 80 billion euro.
Evidence 2: This March the Greek state did not pay its debts to its suppliers amounting to 418 million euro. After the suspension of payments in April, the total amount of outstanding obligations of the state to private Greek companies exceeded 5 billion euro.
Evidence 3: The "pending" applications for VAT refund already total over 860 million euro. Those that require VAT returns to the amount of over 680 million euro have been in the drawers of the tax services for more than 90 days. Indicative is the fact that 20 tax offices have requests that the companies submitted over a year ago.
Evidence 4: Withdrawal of deposits from Greek banks continues, albeit at a slower pace. According to the latest report by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, 7 billion euro were withdrawn in April, which means that the amount withdrawn from Greek banks in the first quarter of 2015 alone was nearly 28 billion euro.