No margins for complacency in bank recapitalization, Dragasakis says

He said it was possible for this to be completed successfully within the current year and that conditions will exist for the lifting of capital controls in the first months of 2016.

Apart from the recapitalization of the four systemic banks, the government was also preparing a comprehensive policy aiming to create a parallel system of financing institutions and tools that will facilitate the mobilisation of domestic resources and also give access to "the pool of global liquidity," he said.

Dragasakis played down fears that Greece's banking system will be "de-Hellenised" as a result of recapitalization and said the aim was a system where banks served society, employment, innovation and growth instead of the other way around.

On the issue of non-performing loans, he said the government's intention was to protect people's homes but stressed that loans could not continue to be issued to "businesses that systematically have their debts in Greece and their profits abroad." He noted that perennially loss-making enterprises will henceforth have to present sustainable restructuring plans in order to be given loans, while businesses will have to start investing their own capital.

Dragasakis said the government's biggest challenge was that of combining the country's memorandum commitments with a parallel programme of bold changes and reforms to the state, the political system, the institutions and the economy to create a "sustainable and socially just productive and social model".