Ongoing prudent fiscal management, best use of recovery funds key to achieving investment grade

A prudent fiscal management and the best use of available funds will allow Greece to face the uncertain times effectively, and to achieve investment-grade status, which is the central national goal for 2023, Finance Minister Christos Staikouras told Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA).

The Finance ministry has ten challanges/goals for the Greek economy, Staikouras said, outlining them as follows:

– Securing the current fiscal responsible attitude
– Implementing interventions to manage economic repercussions of multilevel crises
– Continuing and boosting tax relief for households and businesses (for the middle class, mainly)
– Supporting citizens’ available income
– Boosting social housing and homes
– Continuing to implement structural reforms
– Front-load exploiting of Recovery Fund and Resilience resources, and executing the Program of Public Investments as effectively as possible
– Managing the high, accrued private debt, and limiting the danger of creating new debt following external-related crises
– Boosting National Defense, and
– Actively participating in formulating a new European economic structure, as Greece has been doing the last 3.5 years.

“The dawn of the new year finds the global economy – and more so the European one – facing multiple and significant challenges,” the FinMin told ANA-MPA. “These challenges mostly result from multilevel external crises that last year has passed on to the present, as well as from the present, global turn to more restrictive fiscal and monetary policies.”

Greece is starting off 2023 on more favorable terms compared to other European countries, since it has shown high resilience, a positive course, and favorable prospects, Staikouras said, as is evident from basic indexes.

The country is turning the page on a painful decade of economic crisis, and is “being called upon to further capitalize these achievements and overcome old and new challenges,” Staikouras told ANA-MPA.

source: ANA-MPA