Greece’s crisis still no change..

Greece: The giant container cranes lie still in the haze of a warm spring afternoon in the port of Piraeus near Athens – a vital commercial hub for the economy since the days of ancient Greece.

Business for the local dockworkers is badly down these days as a result of the deep economic crisis that Greece has been plunged into due to spiraling debts and the harsh austerity measures it has been forced to adopt.

“The freight has reduced dramatically,” said Giorgios Ganos, a soft-spoken 37-year-old worker, looking out over the sprawling commercial port laid out along the Saronic Gulf from which ancient Athens once launched its warships.

“If before we were working every day, now it can be 15 or 20 days without a job,” he said.

When there were no ships to load, workers had to survive on a daily minimum wage, he added – and that even that minimum had been cut.

Greek imports have fallen sharply because of a prolonged recession. The Piraeus Port Authority, the state-controlled company that operates the commercial port, slumped to a loss of 33.6 million euros ($42.3 million) last year from a profit of 5.6 million euros in 2008.

Ironically, however, Greek shipowners are doing well due to a recovery in international trade. They may even benefit from Greece’s crisis because of lower salaries during the current downturn, observers said.

Ship orders  are up and some major Greek shipowners have reported healthy profits in the first quarter – largely due to rising demand for raw materials in China and India.

“Luckily for us Greek shipping is not a domestic business, it’s an international business,” Michael Bodouroglou, chief executive officer of New York Stock Exchange-listed Paragon Shipping, told AFP.

“Virtually all our counterparts are based abroad, our revenue stream relies 100 percent on counterparts that are international companies … our financing activities are also based on banks that are non-Greek banks,” he said.

“This may sound a little bit tragic … but the sector is actually benefitting as far as competitiveness is concerned when there is pressure on salaries,” said Bodouroglou, who is based in the port of Voula near Athens.
Paragon Shipping, which is registered in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, has reported profits throughout the economic crisis.

Earlier this month it ordered eight more ships to add to its fleet of 11 vessels.

Theodoros Vanos, project manager for Posidonia, one of the world’s biggest shipping conferences, due to be held in Athens next month with a record number of visitors said some parts of the second had been “hit” by the crisis.

But Vanos said that Greek shipping – the second biggest chunk of the economy after tourism – was doing well despite difficulties in financing because “the international shipping market is rebounding.”

Critics say shipowners could do more to boost the economy.

Under a long-established tradition, shipowners do not pay corporate tax – a concession left intact in the government’s recent austerity drive.

“They are based in Greece but none of what they do is related to Greece,” said Dimitri Sofianopoulos, director for Greece at Norton Rose, a law firm.

“If you start taxing the Greek shipowners, they will go somewhere else,” like Singapore or Dubai where they would pay little or no tax, he said.

The industry argues it is doing its part to help the economy.

“Shipping can help soften the impact of the austerity measures” through investment in the Greek economy and the creation of jobs, Vanos said.

But there is little sign of that windfall trickling down to the graffiti-strewn streets of Piraeus – a town of some 200,000 people. The daily minimum wage for dockworkers has been cut to 42 euros ($53) from 47 euros and – like all Greeks – they have lost the thrice-yearly bonus payments that many relied on to supplement their incomes.

On top of that, Gogos said, unionized dockworkers are being moved to a smaller terminal next month after a Chinese state-owned company, Cosco, won a 35-year concession from the government to manage two terminals at Piraeus.

“We lost a lot of our income” as a result of the debt crisis, said Gogos, who has taken part in all the major protests in Athens in recent weeks.

He added: “We don’t have an alternative. The only alternative is to try to fight through strikes.”