According to the calculations of Oxford Economics, Athens will return to pre-pandemic GDP levels in 2022, greekcitytimes.com reports.
The study examined Europe’s 30 biggest cities.
Oxford Economics predicts that only seven cities- Dublin, Bucharest, Zurich, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, and Sofia – will see their GDP return to pre-pandemic levels in 2021.
The rest will have to wait until 2022, or in two cases, 2023.
“Looking forward, a lot clearly depends on infection rates, vaccine rollouts, and containment measures. The risks to the outlook remain considerable and are unfortunately weighted more towards the downside than the upside. In recent months in many European countries the vaccination pace has been somewhat subdued, with governments continuing to rely instead on a series of lockdowns to counter widespread rises in the numbers of coronavirus cases,” notes economist Richard Holt.
The pandemic caused GDP in Europe’s largest cities in 2020 to a drop that averaged 6.7%.
Athens’ GDP shrank at just under 8%.
In terms of office-based employment, Athens was one of the countries that showed only a small fall in 2020 (with the help of government support measures) and so the increase for 2021 is also projected to be small.
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