Goods exports beat services
Tourism may be considered Greece’s biggest industries, but it was mainly exports of goods that served as a lifeline for the economy and businesses both in the decade of the economic crisis and during the pandemic.
Despite tourism’s strong recovery, goods exports gained ground last year over exports of services in 2021-22, with their proportion of the total exceeding 50% for the first time since 1998.
The gradual improvement in exports is largely linked to the fact that the economic crisis in Greece and the large drop in domestic demand pushed many Greek companies to become export-oriented during the previous decade. Combined with the structural reforms implemented, this has resulted in the strengthening of the country’s export activity, rather slowly until the middle of the decade and more intensively from 2017 until 2020, when the rise of exports – mainly of services – stopped because of the pandemic.
As an Alpha Bank report notes, goods exports rose almost 30% in 2021, and 37% in 2022, accounting for over 20% of GDP – a historic high. The upward trend of goods exports continued in Q1 of 2023, amounting to 13.7 billion euros, up by 17.8% annually.
