ATHENS — "There will provision for tax cuts, not in the sense of announcements, but in the sense of implementations," Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said in comments made to "THEMA FM" radio on Friday.

Referring to what the prime minister will say in Thessaloniki, during the Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) next week, he added that the country was facing the most difficult task of the past decade in the drafting of next year's budget. He noted that Greece has opted to move along three axes: "Tax cuts with a permanent nature. We did what we had promised before the crisis, we proceeded with a series of temporary tax cuts during the pandemic crisis and now in Thessaloniki what we want to do is to proceed with both permanent and temporary cuts, depending on developments during the crisis. "The state must have funds to support workers and enterprises, therefore higher spending, and funds to strengthen the armed forces," he said.

Staikouras stressed that the government has the resources to raise the total package of 24 billion euros for the support of households and enterprises hit by the pandemic.

He added that the government has no reasons to change its forecast for the country's GDP, based on current facts and noted that in September Greece was expecting the first disbursement of European funds from the SURE programme, totaling 2.7 billion euros.