By Tasos Dasopoulos
With the aim of completing investments and reforms of over 5 billion euros and starting private investments of about 3 billion euros, the new year for the Greek program of the “Greece 2.0” Recovery Fund begins.
After the relatively slow pace of project integration in recent months, due to the delays by Brussels of the formal stages of the official start of the program (mainly the signing of the business contract between YPOIK and EU), now the initiative is in Greece to accelerate the stage of implementation of the program in investments and reforms.
So far, a total of 48 projects have been announced since last October, with a budget of 2.76 billion euros. Since then the special managing authority has significantly accelerated the integration of projects. 50 project integration and reform decisions have already been issued, with the main volume concerning the digitization of all sectors of the State. In addition to digital actions, project integration decisions include a reform that will definitively solve the clawback problem with pharmaceutical companies. Under the new scheme, they will either reimburse the amount in excess of the amount approved for pharmaceutical expenditure or they will have to prove equivalent expenditure on research and technology in the pharmaceutical sector. Thus, by the side road, the amount that will not be returned to the State will be charged to the state budget, but will be converted into research expenditure.
The projects to be included also include many training activities of the Ministry of Labor, projects related to the improvement of the digital infrastructure of AADE, the infrastructure of the courts and the creation of urban plans for the whole country.
Another 50 entries
Along with the projects to be joined, there are 50 other investments and reforms of all kinds, which have already been included, but have not yet been officially announced. Among them is part of the financing of BOAK, the restoration of the old royal palace in Tatoi, but also the part of the investments that will be financed by “Greece 2.0” and concerns the mergers, acquisitions and collaborations of small and medium enterprises. This effort, which has as its ultimate goal the growth of Greek companies in order to obtain a banking profile and proceed to economies of scale, will begin after the adoption of the relevant legislative framework at the beginning of the year by Parliament.
The goal is to have projects and reforms with a total budget of about 5 billion euros implemented by the end of the year and to have prepared a series of infrastructure projects of national importance that will be integrated and implemented gradually by the end of 2025.
Investments of 3 billion euros
The second important goal is to make a dynamic start in the private investment arm, which will be financed by the 12.7 billion euro loans of the Recovery Fund. The official goal is in time to start private investments that will be financed by the Recovery Fund with 600 million euros. However, the expectations are that by the end of 2022, resources from “Greece 2.0” loans amounting to 1.2 – 1.5 billion euros have been committed to investments.
Given that the money available to the Ministry of Finance will cover the investment budgets at a rate of 30% to 50% of the Budget, the investments that are expected to start in 2022 through the Recovery Fund will reach about 3 billion euros. . The pace of investment implementation is expected to accelerate significantly in the coming years.
In this regard, a total of six commercial banks’ participation agreements in the financing of private investments through the Recovery Fund were signed in the previous days. Specifically, contracts were signed by NBG, Alpha Bank, Piraeus, Eurobank, Optima Bank and Pankritia and a seventh is expected to be signed in the near future, with the Cooperative Bank of Central Macedonia.
Together with the EIB, which will contribute € 5 billion, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which will contribute € 1 billion, the Bank for Recovery Fund’s private investment financing will reach € 13 billion. . euro.
The first investment proposals that will be approved and will start to be financed are expected to arrive around the end of February and the beginning of March.
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Source From: Capital
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