Task force, bonuses for recovery plan

The six-year challenge that is the utilization of European resources through the “Greece 2.0” program has been entrusted to a select task force of 40 technocrats, a new information technology system and the know-how of some 15 private consultants.

However, that will not suffice without the assistance of the civil servants who will be responsible for the tenders and the concession of the projects and the programs. Past experience speaks volumes of that, so Alternate Finance Minister Thodoros Skylakakis is planning on handing out a bonus to specific employees, starting with the tender committees: “We shall gradually start giving to others too, as long as we have the fiscal space and depending on performance,” he says.

That task force will be the newly founded “Special Coordination Agency for the Recovery Fund,” led by Nikos Mantzoufas, a former special secretary for private investments and public-private partnerships who spent more than a decade in that post, under three governments.

So far the agency has recruited 10 people, with at least 20 of the total 40 expected to come from the public administration, and the rest from the private sector.