Greece has enterprises that are capable of taking the lead in global markets, National Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis stated on Thursday, speaking at the 4th Naftemporiki Economic Conference.
“The competitiveness aspect is the number 1 target for all of us, on both a national and a European level,” he stressed.
Departing from his prepared remarks and opting instead to respond to previous speakers, Pierrakakis particularly highlighted the issue of competitiveness, noting that this effort was the main underpinning of the Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta reports.
“All this has to do with a series of observations we can make on a European-wide level,” the minister added, citing the “invisible barriers” between EU member-states that were pointed out by Draghi and pointing out that there were things that Europe could have achieved but had not done so.
“This is reflected in the growth rate of the EU member-states,” he added, noting that deeper financial and banking union was necessary in order to give an added boost to growth.
Pierrakakis highlighted Greece’s success in overcoming the 10-year economic crisis and turning the corner in terms of key economic indicators, such as public debt, unemployment rate and a GDP growth rate that was significantly better than the EU average.
“All this is good. All these are gains. We now have primary surpluses…but the fact remains that there are still many problems and many challenges that we must still overcome. It is clear that we are still facing a range of outstanding issues,” Pierrakakis said, highlighting the issue of productivity, especially, and areas where Greece had made some progress but still lagged behind the EU average.
He stressed that the goal must not be self-sufficiency but dominance, with the aim to create not national but ‘European champions’.
“Once we spoke more about national champions. In reality, however, we do not need 27 successful economies in Europe. We need a truly unified single market in order to achieve the scale needed to be competitive, as your conference says, so that European businesses can compete globally with the American or the Chinese businesses across the globe. And this means that in Greece we have businesses that can upgrade themselves even more in order to compete on this global international competition spectrum,” Pierrakakis said.
This also required removing obstacles from the national economy and exploiting state property, he added, announcing that the ministry will soon present a law dealing with centuries-old foundations whose assets had never properly been evaluated or used.
The minister said that the present government was ready to “do the obvious things” that had not been done for decades, including changing the model of production and enlisting modern technology and digital tools to transform its economy.
“We have achieved a lot. We can achieve much, much more-there is still much to be done. But we will not undo or tear down what has already been accomplished. Everyone-regardless of political spectrum, color, stance, or belief-must build upon what has been achieved. We owe it both to ourselves and to those who came before us,” Pierrakakis concluded.
