ATHENS (MNI) – The Greek parliament Thursday approved the president
and three board members of the newly-created Hellenic Statistics
Authority (ELSTAT), which the government agreed to establish as part of
an aid package from the Eurozone and International Monetary Fund.
The Greek debt crisis was sparked by revelations from Greece’s
Socialist-run government that statistics had been falsified under the
previous government to hide the true size of the country’s public
deficit, which turned out to be a whopping 13.6% of GDP in 2009, the
highest in Europe.
The board positions were all advertised both in Greece and
internationally.
The president of the new agency is Andreas Georgiou, who previously
served as deputy chief of statistics at the IMF and holds undergraduate
and graduate degrees from colleges in the United States.
The three other board members approved today are Nikolaos
Logothetis, who will serve as vice-president he holds a PhD from the
University of Nottingham in the UK. Also on the board are Zoe Georganta,
who holds a PhD from the University of Leeds, and Andreas Filippou, with
a Phd from the University of Wisconsin in the U.S.
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