Large economic gains from Greece 2.0

The money from the recovery fund and the “Greece 2.0” program will help the country regain a part of the growth lost during the pandemic, provided that it is invested correctly, Alternate Finance Minister Thodoros Skylakakis said in an interview with the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.

He explained that the money from the recovery fund will be partly spent on public works and partly on social infrastructure and actions, all of which would benefit “large numbers of people.”

Roughly 1.5 billion euros will be spent to support small and medium-sized enterprises that want to make investments, while a large loan program will be open to all businesses that are able to build a “bank profile” in the next three years.

According to Skylakakis, the plan will give priority to the green transition, the digital transition, health, education, private investments, covering the investment gap with emphasis on digital and green investments, openness and collaborations and mergers, in that order.

Asked about the possibility of “new targeted measures” given the promising figures for growth, Skylakakis pointed out that there were problems that were still unfolding, such as the pandemic and the spike in prices, as well as “significant sums” in the cash reserves of the next budget.

This meant that there will “obviously be measures that we do not know yet and which will be made specific over the course of the next year,” he clarified, including in the energy sector.