The Bank of Greece (BoG) says its forecasts reveal a much healthier economic outlook for Greece in 2022, mainly due to very high tourism yield, with revenues expected to surpass even the record-breaking year 2019. It is expected that in 2022, over 35 million tourists would have visited Greece mainly for the summer season. Greece has also sought to extend the tourism period all year round with winter and city based tourism.
Central banker Yannis Stournaras was buoyant last Wednesday when he announced a revised growth forecast.
He stressed that it was important for Greece to return to fiscal surpluses in the medium term, and said that reaching investment grade is up to the country now.
On interest rates, the central banker was reassuring, and estimated they will not increase much.
The BoG had put its growth estimate for this year at 3.2 per cent; however, when the forecast was made, the assumption was that travel receipts would reach 80 per cent of 2019.
“They now seem likely to grow significantly above 100 per cent,” he said.
However, he underlined some concerns about the energy crisis, and said that “the winter will be difficult for all of Europe.”
The global economy received two major supply-side shocks, he added, the pandemic and the Russian Ukraine war, which brought to sharp relief the Europe’s energy dependence on Russia.
“Some 80 per cent of inflation in our country and the rest of Europe, is attributed to external forces, energy and food prices hikes are a direct result of the war in Ukraine,” he said.
