Minister and food industry at loggerheads over VAT
“We cannot and do not want to reduce value-added tax,” said National Economy and Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis on Monday, categorically refusing the request made once again by the president of the Association of Greek Food Industries (SEVT), Ioannis Jotis, at the body’s annual general assembly.
“We cannot reduce VAT for reasons of fiscal balance and we do not want to for reasons of balance. We don’t want to encourage consumption, but investment. I also believe that the VAT reduction will not reach the market, the consumer. I don’t want to sign off on a destabilization of the budget,” the minister told the event.
Earlier Jotis said: “We supported the measures. We did what was asked of us. We want to have a reduction in VAT. Let us also compete with the other countries. If Spain hadn’t done it, then the increases in that country would be much higher at the given moment. I guarantee that the VAT reduction will be passed on to the consumer.”
However, Hatzidakis stated that at the end of the year the government will review its accounts and see what it can do to ease the tax burden, but not necessarily, as he pointed out once again, in the direction of reducing VAT. He referred to the further reduction of non-salary costs by half a percentage point in 2025, in the bill that will provide incentives for mergers, while he called on entrepreneurs to use the funding tools to make investments.
“You ask us to make investments and get subsidies from the [National Strategic Reference Framework], from the investment incentives law. We make investments but we don’t get the subsidies. Payments are delayed for more than six months, even a year. The businessmen go and on the one hand they are told that now they have to give money to Thessaly for the floods, on the other they are told something else,” retorted the SEVT president.
“We are an industry with a turnover of 17 billion euros, €7 billion in exports and we are the largest employer with over 360,000 direct and indirect jobs,” added Jotis.
