Trade with Greece
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Third, the government seeks to create a fully
extrovert environment, which is also friendly to
targeted investment. The aim is to ensure that,
year after year, public and private investment
increases its contribution to the country’s output.
As the government’s financial staff claims, “the
foundations of this process are already being laid
by the privatizations programme that is imple-
mented by the HRADF, as well as by the proce-
dure for attracting strategic investment”.
Moreover, Greece is systematically trying to max-
imize the importance of its geostrategic position,
as far as attracting major direct foreign invest-
ment is concerned. Moreover, its role in interna-
tional transit trade will gradually become more
and more important for the Greek economy. In
addition, the direct and indirect contribution of
tourism to GDP growth is destined to increase
every year.
Fourth, the aim is to turn Greece into a country
that will invest in the knowledge triangle, i.e. the
interaction between research, education and
innovation. The effort is to adopt an holistic and
horizontal policy, whose main axis will be high-
quality education, in order to help the country
close the gap that separates it from the leading
countries.
The facts about the debt
Although the recession did not allow for a drastic
reduction of the debt as a percentage of the GDP
–since no matter how much the debt is reduced in
absolute numbers, when the denominator is
smaller the ratio will increase– the Ministry of
Finance estimates that the growth rate of the pub-
lic debt is being contained.
That said, they are quick in pointing out that this
growth is neither unexpected, nor can be the
cause of concern since –as the government
says– it is temporary, it is time-specific as to its
duration and, most importantly, it is offset by the
acquisition of assets by the Greek state.
More specifically, as pointed out, this apparent
increase in debt is due to the obligation to
account for the disbursement of funds by the
European Financial Stability Facility to the Greek
state in order to finance the recapitalization of
banks.
However, the debt that is generated by the dis-
