Greece ‘gradually building for the post-coronavirus era’
“Greece is gradually but steadily building for the post-coronavirus era, picking up from where it left off in February 2020,” Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said on Wednesday after meeting with Klaus Regling, the managing director of the European Stability Mechanism.
He noted, however, that these challenges can be met with wider, European solutions, adding that these presuppose practical solidarity, fast reflexes and speedy action on the part of European institutions and partners in order to justify the history of Europe as a power of peace, democracy, growth, social prosperity and cohesion.
Staikouras also referred to the six measures promoted for the post-pandemic era: exploiting fiscal flexibility, implementing a rational fiscal policy toward focused tax cuts and social insurance contributions, successfully raising funds on capital markets and preserving high cash reserves, implementing a privatization and state asset exploitation program, reducing the stock of nonperforming loans, and working methodically and hard to make use of Next Generation EU funds.
Staikouras described the challenges lying ahead for the country: leaving the pandemic and its economic impact behind, bringing economies back to pre-crisis levels as soon as possible, taking prudent advantage of continuing loose fiscal rules, preserving all necessary measures until a sustainable recovery is fully established, reviewing the terms of the Stability and Growth Pact, and achieving the fastest possible disbursement of funds from the EU recovery fund.
