Greece's radical left government on Friday carried out its first privatisation since coming to power by selling a 20-year horseracing gambling licence to a subsidiary of Czech-Greek company Opap for 40.5 million euros ($44 million). "We have carried out a difficult denationalisation," said Sterios Pitsiorlas, who heads the Greek privatisation agency Taiped.
The privatisation was handled in a manner that ensures that the horseracing business continues in "conditions that would assure its development," he added. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's government, which took power three months ago, had been largely opposed to the previous regime's plans to raise funds for the cash-strapped state through the sale of public assets, and had vowed to halt such privatisations. But it came under intense pressure from cash-strapped Greece's international creditors to move forward with such sales. Tsipras's government now expects to raise 1.5 billion euros from asset sales in 2015, about a third less than the 2.2 billion euros expected under the previous government's budget.