Trade with Greece
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A
ccording to a statement by the President
of the Panhellenic Exporters Association,
Christina Sakellaridi: “the National Export
Strategy’s focus on the triptych: liquidity enhance-
ment, simplification of procedures and creation of
extroversion-supporting institutions, through the
collaboration of the Public and Private sectors, is
a guarantee for progress.”More specifically, the
Ministry is stepping up the simplification of export
procedures, while the launching of “Enterprise
Greece SA” is expected within the first months of
2014, as the minister for Development, K.
Hatzidakis, recently disclosed, presenting the sin-
gle extroversion agency.
Pretty soon, he added, the government will meet
the target of reimbursing export VAT to businesses
within 90 days, also announcing that he would
have a meeting with bank representatives regard-
ing the provision of liquidity to the market, with
emphasis on extrovert enterprises.
Meanwhile, it was stressed that the agencies that
are being merged (HEPO and “Invest In Greece”)
are currently short-handed, employing only 30
people each, while the aim is to staff the new
agency with at least 200 people.
That said, the minister added that the simplification
of the procedures regarding custom controls is pro-
gressing according to schedule, with few, if any,
deviations, and 21 out of 25 measures are properly
implemented, a fact also verified by the troika.
In this context, the customs hours of operation will
be extended in regard to cross-border trade, the
systems used for customs controls are upgraded,
and export procedures are simplified for 10 key
Greek products, such as olive oil and aluminium,
following the pilot programmes that were imple-
mented in the cases of kiwis and feta cheese.
In fact, the minister said that DHL, the courier
company, sent the Ministry a letter claiming that it
was able to reduce rates by 50% and delivery
times by one day.
The deputy minister for Foreign Affairs, Dimitris
Kourkoulas, stressed the importance of
embassies in restoring Greece’s reliability as it
exits the crisis, while 59 Economic and
Commercial Affairs Offices in 50 countries han-
dled 15,300 applications in 2012, as compared to
11,700 applications received in 2011.
Economic and Commercial Affairs officers will
start being assigned to new posts abroad, such
as St Petersburg, Qatar, Mexico and so on, while
personnel from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will
also be seconded to the new export agency.
The deputy minister for Development, Notis
Mitarachi, noted that the draft law on the estab-
lishment of “Enterprise Greece” will achieve the
target of ensuring that “no investment is chased
away and [no investment] is bogged down in red
tape”, as Greek networks are being integrated.
The agency will establish contacts in international
Positive signs regarding
the extroversion of
Greek enterprises
Positive signs regarding the consolidation of the
extroversion vision in Greece, as well as the provision
of support to extrovert enterprises, are sent by the
strategy pursued by the Ministry of Development
By Evi Papadosifakis
