Greece’s port in a storm: anger as Syriza stops China extending hold on Piraeus

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/09/greece-syriza-stops-china-extending-hold-piraeus



Piraeus port, just outside Athens, which is partly run by Cosco, a Chinese state-owned company.

Greece’s port in a storm: anger as Syriza stops China extending hold on Piraeus
Helena Smith
Monday 9 February 2015 11.05 EST

Day and night, the Chinese-run piers of the Piraeus container terminal are a hive of activity. Lorries come and go while forklift trucks zoom around and colossal cranes heave giant containers from ship to shore.

Five years after its arrival in the Mediterranean, China’s global shipping carrier, Cosco, takes immense pride in the efficiency with which affairs are conducted on these piers. Business activity has tripled since the state-owned conglomerate acquired the port for €500m (£373m), the biggest foreign investment in Greece in modern times.

But any plans by Beijing to extend its commercial reach have been rudely interrupted by the ascent to power of Syriza, the radical leftists upending conventional orthodoxies in Greece.

On its maiden day in office, the new government announced that a privatisation programme launched to trim the country’s staggering €320bn debt load was in effect null and void. Plans to sell off further port assets – repair docks as well as car, passenger and cruise ship terminals that Cosco had been bidding for – have been scrapped.

[potone]

1. Good!

I am pleased that Syriza is stopping the privitization of Greece's assets. Enough disaster capitalism!