Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday met the Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Mathias Cormann, who presented the OECD Economic Survey of Greece to the prime minister while visiting Athens.
"It is a presentation that acknowledges the very substantial progress that Greece has made in the last five years. It also presents, however - and I consider this especially valuable - useful proposals regarding the course of our future actions. I believe that there is no doubt - and I think that this is confirmed by the report - that the Greek economy is now in a much better state than it was five years ago," Mitsotakis said.
"This progress makes a real difference as regards the living standards of our citizens, as is proved by the reduction of unemployment and the increase in real wages, as they are presented in the report, especially for the years 2023 and 2024. We must not forget that the economy has generated 500,000 jobs in the last five years. With this in mind, I agree that much more still needs to be done to achieve the convergence of our citizens' living standards with those of the OECD and, of course, the European average," he added.
The prime minister noted that the composition of Greece's economic activity is gradually changing, with industry and manufacturing having a greater share in terms of both GDP and employment. He said that the process of convergence had begun and this was reflected in the report's forecast for strong growth of potential production, which indicated an acceleration of Greece's productive capacity.
Mitsotakis referred to the goal of ensuring that the Artificial Intelligence "revolution" acts as a catalyst benefiting the country and the citizens, while stressing that all reforms need a favourable political environment.
"Greece today is a country that has a stable government, with a single-party majority in Parliament. In a time when the political situation in many European countries is becoming increasingly more complex, this is the most important prerequisite for implementing a bold programme of reforms," Mitsotakis said.
"We are in the happy position of meeting this requirement. We surely intend to honour the trust that the Greek people have generously bestowed upon us in the recent elections and ensure that we will proceed with bold reforms," he added.