Troubled nation has taken to selling islands as a means of repaying debts
Troubled nation has taken to selling islands as au00a0meansu00a0of repaying debts
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For Sir Richard Branson it is Neckar in the Caribbean, the billionaire Barclay brothers prefer Brecqhou in the Channel Islands, while Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios, his Greek hideway.
Now, Greece is making it easier for the rich and famous to fulfill their dreams by preparing to sell, or offering long-term leases on, some of its 6,000 sun-kissed islands in a desperate attempt to repay its mountainous debts.
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| Tiny islands in Greece can be had for as little as Rs 11.36 crore |
Injecting capital
An area in Mykonos, one of Greece's top tourist destinations, is one of the sites for sale.
The area is one-third owned by the government, which is looking for a buyer willing to inject capital and develop a luxury tourism complex, according to a source close to the negotiations.
Potential investors also looking at property on the island of Rhodes, are mostly Russian and Chinese. Investors in both countries are looking for a little bit of the Mediterranean as holiday destinations for their increasingly affluent populations.
Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea football club, is among those understood to be interested, although a spokesman denied he was about to invest.
Desperate measures
Greece has embarked on the desperate measures after being pushed into a ufffd 90 billion (Rs 6.22 lakh crore) bailout by the EU and the IMF last month, following a decade of overspending and after jittery investors raised borrowing costs to unbearable levels.
The sale of an island or convincing a member of the international jet-set to take on a long-term lease would help to boost its coffers.
The Private Islands website lists 1,235-acre Nafsika, in the Ionian sea, on sale foru00a0 15 million Euro (Rs 85.19 crore).
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But others are on for less than 2 million (Rs 11.26 crore). Some of the country's numerous islands are tiny andu00a0 could barely fit a single sunbed.
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