ND chief promises to reduce taxes, renegotiate primary surplus targets

Greece’s conservative opposition leader has promised to bring down taxes for domestic and international businesses as well as renegotiate the country’s primary budget surpluses if he becomes prime minister in elections later this year.

In an interview with American news channel CNBC, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he plans to reduce Greece’s corporate tax rate to 20 percent in two years as part of an “aggressive and comprehensive tax reform.”

The New Democracy leader also said he can bring Greek bonds back to investment-grade levels within 18 months.

“We will… be sending a very clear signal to the capital markets that we mean business,” Mitsotakis told CNBC.

The conservative chief repeated his calls for a deal with Athens’s EU partners on reducing Greek primary budget surplus targets in order to make fiscal space for meaningful reform.

“I’ve said from the beginning that I respect the agreements made by the current government, but I’ve also told my European partners that should we be able to deliver real reforms, we should be rewarded with smaller primary surpluses, at least in 2021 and 2022,” he said.

While criticizing the leftist government for overshooting fiscal targets as sending “the wrong message,” Mitsotakis said Greece needed a growth rate “of at least in the short-term of 4 percent,” up from the current 2.2 percent.