Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis participated via online link in a discussion with the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, during the investment roadshow for Greece held in New York on January 25.
Mitsotakis said that his government had inherited many problems when it came into power in 2019 but had been clear from the start that the economy must be put on a track of sustainable growth without jeopardizing the country’s fiscal position.
He said that the government had achieved this by changing the fundamentals of the Greek economy, from one based primarily on consumption to one relying much more on growth based on investments, pointing to the rapid increase in foreign direct investments in recent years.
Regarding the government’s reform work and its targets, Mitsotakis said that his government was fully aware that much hard work remains to be done to improve Greece’s competitiveness, by improving its business environment.
He especially emphasized the government’s focus on judicial reform in order to speed up the delivery of justice, noting that the time needed for a case to be tried in Greece was “not acceptable”.
The prime minister said he had set very clear targets, with a primary goal being an increase of real wages so as to cover the higher cost of living. He pointed to tax cuts to legal entities and dividends and simpler tax laws while adding that businesses needed to pay better wages than in the past, chiefly in order to attract high-caliber employees.
On his part, Dimon stated that Greece has embraced a healthy path to economic growth, which is supported by sensible policies and reforms that have an impact, while it has achieved a remarkable reduction of the debt-GDP ratio. The heightened interest of the international investment community in Greek enterprises was proof of the potential of the private sector in the country and an important step for sustaining growth in the future, he added.
