Government pleased with investments

The government cites the 16% increase in gross investments over the year’s first half compared to the same period two years earlier – i.e. before the pandemic – to illustrate that its policy has met with a positive response by businesses.

Speaking on Wednesday to Kathimerini, and with the visit by the head of AccorHotels, Sebastien Bazin, and his meeting with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis serving as a backdrop, government officials argued that the choice of putting reforms at the heart of Greece’s policy is paying dividend, as those reforms are leading to higher growth that will in turn be beneficial for society.

Bazin is in Greece for the opening of his group’s new hotel in the country, but the government is not just interested in the group opening another unit in Athens; instead it cares more about creating a tourism training center in Greece, which was apparently discussed during Wednesday’s meeting with Mitsotakis, even if there is no concrete outcome just yet. Some more issues discussed at the meeting were new and alternative forms of tourism, in the context of improving the Greek tourism product, as they are at the government’s focus.

Gross investments increased from 8.5 billion euros in January-June 2019 to €10 billion this year, which corresponds to 400 investment projects, mainly by small and medium-sized enterprises. The government is also investing in the bill it is currently drafting, regarding the process for accepting strategic investments, so as to render that procedure more “solid,” as officials say.

Following the recent positive news on the privatizations front, the same sources noted that the leveraging of capital has been greater than expected and stressed that the three priorities set at the start of this administration, in the summer of 2019, are now under implementation: They are the shift to a macroeconomic model, the structural changes and the resolution of the banks’ nonperforming loans problem. They went on to note that this was also the upshot of the prime minister’s announcements in Thessaloniki.