Since last Monday the process of streamlining troubled companies has been taken out of the courtroom, in the context of the new bankruptcy law.
ECONOMY
Greece’s economic sentiment index rose slightly to 91.9 points in February from 90.7 in January, the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) said on Monday.
The Labor Ministry’s decision to change the declarations of workers on furlough has put up a barrier against a new form of undeclared labor that recently swept the market.
Wealthy foreigners who have relocated their tax domicile to Greece – mostly diaspora Greeks involved in shipping – invest in real estate and non-listed companies.
Provisional estimates put electronic commerce turnover in Greece at 11 billion euros last year, posting an annual jump of 35%, Athens University for Economics and Business Professor Giorgos Doukidis said.
Aspiring entrepreneurs are now able to launch their business activity by taking care of all the necessary paperwork work online.
The volume of retail sales dropped 11% overall in December, with a rise reported only in supermarkets and in pharmacies, the Hellenic Statistical Authority announced on Friday.
![Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras arrives to attend the annual meeting of the bank's shareholders in Athens, Greece April 1, 2019. [Costas Baltas/Reuters]](https://www.ekathimerini.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/stournaras_reuters-320x200.jpg)
Greece’s Yannis Stournaras became the first European Central Bank policymaker on Friday to openly call for increasing the pace of ECB bond purchases to stem a rise in borrowing costs.
![[Shutterstock]](https://www.ekathimerini.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/digital_nomads_shutterstock_web-320x200.jpg)
Greece could benefit to the tune of 1.6 billion euros a year by competing for a fair share of the estimated 4 million digital nomads around the world, an online conference in Athens has heard.
![An employee works at a Greek Manpower Employment Organisation (OAED) office in Kalamaki suburb near Athens, February 15. [Costas Baltas/Reuters]](https://www.ekathimerini.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/bureaucracy_reuters-320x200.jpg)
Before Covid-19, visits to Greece’s paper-strewn labor offices were an ordeal of queues and case files, often for basic matters that in less than a year have moved online as the pandemic upended old administrative routines.
The European Commission expects an extra burden on the state budget from the stricter lockdowns in Greece amounting to 2.6 billion euros or 1.5% of gross domestic product.
Greece is in talks with the European Commission to extend its “Hercules” bad loan reduction scheme to help banks further shrink the mountain of impaired credit burdening their balance sheets, the deputy finance minister said on Wednesday.
![A girl rides a scooter inside a mall with closed shops, in the suburb of Glyfada, south of Athens, earlier this month. [AP]](https://www.ekathimerini.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/shuttered_shops_ap-320x200.jpg)
It was announced last Thursday that due taxes, whose payment had been suspended from March 2020 until now, will remain frozen until the end of the year.
The Finance Ministry is increasingly leaning towards the forecast of the European Commission for a 3.5% growth rate of the Greek economy this year, as the current conditions with the extension of the strict lockdown in various parts of the country have rendered the budget target of 4.8% difficult to attain.
The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to widen wealth gaps in Europe unless policymakers help end the health crisis globally, support economies until the pandemic is over and invest in making economies greener, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
The government is preparing for the day after the pandemic, amid fears that the first few months after the lifting of lockdown measures and the restoration of normalcy will come with more businesses closures and more layoffs than seen during the pandemic.
[nx_login_form]x
