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The ‘counterweights’ to avoid recession

By Tasos Dasopoulos

Measures for public and private investment and to compensate for the loss of income are recruited by the financial staff, with the aim of mitigating as far as possible the effects of accuracy.

It is reminded that YPOIK has set a goal in the budget of 2022 to have a growth of 4.5%, which will come from the increase of private consumption by 3%, exports by 11.1% and investments by 21.9%.

Following the outbreak of the war, and high energy inflation, the question mark is mainly on the largest increase in the value of imports of goods from the 8.9% estimated by the budget. The higher the increase in imports by 8.9%, the lower the GDP, slowing down the growth rate of the economy. For this reason, YPOIK accelerates the implementation of the Fund for Recovery and Resilience (TAA) which will be for this year, the “backbone” of the Public Investment Program.

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Infogram

It is recalled that, a few days ago, another 73 projects with a total budget of 2.4 billion euros were included, reaching the total activation of the Greece 2.0 budget, at 8.5 billion euros. Among the new projects are those involving net grants totaling 1.5 billion euros for small and medium-sized enterprises. These are programs related to the digital transformation of small and medium enterprises, the creation of new industrial parks, the promotion of the agri-food sector (including contract farming), the improvement of the tourism product and a special part of the “Save” program for small and medium enterprises.

All these programs were ready to “run” from the autumn of 2021 but were delayed after Brussels proceeded slowly with the signing of the business contract with the Greek authorities. Their “advantage” in terms of the implementation of the overall Greek program lies in the fact that they are subsidy programs. Therefore, with their implementation, they rapidly absorb equal grants from Community funds.

In the meantime the object of the Greek program that is activated is growing rapidly. This is evidenced by another 50 new projects that have already been collected by YPOIK, which will soon enter the implementation phase with their inclusion in the funding of the Recovery Fund.

At the same time, the private investments that will be implemented with the use of the loans of 12.7 billion euros that Greece has secured have started to run. In the approximately one month since the signing of the integration agreements with the Greek commercial banks, investment proposals of over 250 million euros have been collected, which have already entered the evaluation phase.

Along with the investments and reforms implemented through the Recovery Fund, the new year started impressively for the exports that had an increase of 33.9% in January, but also for the construction activity, which had an increase in the first month of the year 46, 5%, in terms of financial volume.

The critical size of Tourism is also closely monitored. So far, according to the ministry, there is no bad news. This in the sense that there is a “freeze” of bookings, but we do not have – at least for now – cancellations.

Income replenishment

At the same time, the financial staff is working towards the replacement – at least in part – of the loss of income. At the end of last week, the package of support measures amounting to 1.12 billion was announced, in which, if added together with the reduction by 360 million euros of the reduction of ENFIA and the measures for the protection of farmers and the increase of the installments of the repayable advance, amounting to 1.7 billion euros. The next serious move will be the increase of the minimum wage that became forward and instead of September, it will be implemented in May.

In the business sector, in addition to the increased subsidies, the Ministry of Finance is preparing to extend the reduced VAT rates for catering, tourism, transport, theaters and cinemas until the end of the year.

Source: Capital

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