Budget shows unexpected resilience
Even if the market was mostly closed over the first quarter of the year, the budget revenues showed an impressive resilience, official data revealed on Thursday, and had the Bank of Greece paid out the state’s dividend takings they would have posted an increase of 2.1% compared to the same period last year.
With the help of expenditure, the primary deficit in January-March amounted to just 3.4 billion euros, against an official estimate for €4.3 billion.
Alternate Finance Minister Thodoros Skylakakis attributed that performance to the overall resilience of the Greek economy, the lower-than-expected recession of 2020 (at 8.2% instead of the budget projection for 10.5%) and the payment culture.
Value-added tax data make for some particularly interesting reading, with online transactions recording a 7% increase last month from March 2020.
Skylakakis noted that “the March budget figures show that the purely tax revenues in March were within forecasts,” as they amounted to €105.42 billion euros, just €326 million euros or 3% below the budget target based on the assumption there would be no March lockdown.
