ATHENS – With Greece’s slow recovery from a nine-year economic crisis being held back after Prime Minister and Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras went on a rampage of handouts and hirings to win back votes with July 7 snap polls coming, Bank of Greece Governor Yanis Stournaras warned against repeating the calamity.
That came after the country’s statistical agency ELSTAT released figures showing the economy’s burgeoning rebound was being held back after decades of wild overspending and runaway patronage forced successive governments to get 326 billion euros ($367.25 billion) in three international bailouts that expired on Aug. 20, 2018.
“The hardest days are behind us,” Stournaras told Kriti TV. “However, we must make sure not to repeat past mistakes in order to cut public debt, to support banks in managing non-performing loans and reduce unemployment,” he added.
ELSTAT figures showed that the economy grew by just 1.3 percent on a yearly basis in the January-March period, a comedown from expectations after Tsipras cut taxes he’d raised and gave handouts to pensioners and jobless youths in what the poll-leading New Democracy said were open bribes to buy votes.
The government then responded that the economy was continuing to recover, albeit slowly and that the data “confirm that the Greek economy’s recovery continued for a ninth quarter in a row.”
New Democracy’s economy spokesman Christos Staikouras said that “the Greek economy continues to fly low as a result of the deliberate government choice to overtax households and corporations, so as to achieve excessive primary surpluses.”
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