PM Mitsotakis dispels war scenarios with Türkiye, predicts further growth in Greece’s economy in 2023

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his confidence that Greece’s economy is set to grow even further in 2023, in an interview with journalist Fareed Zakaria at the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Thursday.

The premier said that he “expects a growth of around 2% – not 1% – in 2023,” and that this rate might even be higher.

What is more important, he added, “is the number of foreign direct investments: we had a record year in 2021, and a new record in 2022, and we achieved this without sacrificing our priority of fiscal sustainability.”

Mitsotakis also emphasized that the reduction of Greek debt as a percentage of GDP was the fastest compared to any other European country, to the point “that no one is now raising the Greek debt as an issue [of concern], and no one is talking about Greek banks as an issue.”

When his government came to power in 2019, he noted, “we had non-performing loans on 40% of banks’ balance sheets, but now the numbers are in single digits. There were a lot of ‘clouds’ that seem to have cleared, which also gives us room to plan for the future, without being in a constant state of ‘crisis management’.”

On Greece-Türkiye relations, Mitsotakis said that “a channel of understanding will be found with Türkiye,” stressing that “we will not go to war, although we have witnessed many tensions in the last three years,” and he added that “we should be able to sit at the table with Türkiye like ‘reasonable adults’, and resolve our main difference – which is the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Earlier on Thursday, Mitsotakis met with Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, who congratulated the premier on Greece’s economic performance over the last few years.

source: ANA-MPA