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Significant positive measures to ease burdens included in 2019 draft budget

The prospects for joint development and cooperation with the Balkan countries are "the prospects of the future" for reorganising production in northern Greece and Thessaloniki, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Thursday.

The prime minister was addressing the 3rd Thessaloniki Summit 2018, organised by the Federation of Industries of Northern Greece (FING) General Assembly.
Welcoming good news from Brussels, Tsipras said his joy in addressing the summit this year was even greater "because the landscape around us is very different and much brighter."
"As you will have already heard, the news from Brussels was especially good during today's session of the EuroWorking Group," Tsipras noted, saying that those investing in prophecies of disaster and pension cuts had been proved wrong, as well as those predicting that the positive measures that he had announced at this year's Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) would not be implemented.
According to the prime minister, a series of significant and necessary measures to ease the financial burdens will be included in the 2019 draft budget.

Positive measures, for society's weakest but also middle class and businesses

After eight long years, Greece has finally emerged from the bailout programmes with a deal on its debt that opens up a "clear 15-year corridor," and for the first time has a package of measures to ease its debt that make it sustainable and manageable, Tsipras noted.
"More importantly, with the successful conclusion of the third programme, unlike the two preceding programmes, the tools of economic policy are now in our hands," he said, noting that the government can now implement its own national strategic plan for growth.
This more optimistic environment would be reflected in the 2019 budget, which would be free of austerity measures and include "significant and necessary measures" to ease the burdens, not just for the lowest incomes but also the middle classes and businesses, and "give the real economy a growth boost."
He also pointed out that FING's standing demand to become a social partner was being realised.

Greece a pillar of stability, prosperity and joint development

The prime minister went on to emphasise the importance of an active foreign policy that solved problems, a policy that exploited the region's prospects for making Greece a pillar of stability, economic prosperity and joint development, as a way of showcasing Greece's comparative advantages and attracting investments.
"In such a course, Thessaloniki and all of northern Greece are undoubtedly not only the strongest regional branch of the country's developmental potential but the branch that is critical for joint development in the Balkans and Southeastern Europe," he added.
Using this potential was crucial, he noted, especially after the Prespes Agreement, making an outward-looking Greek economy and diplomacy more important than ever," he added.

Support for labour necessary

"An exit from the crisis is not just about positive growth rates for us but also improving social indices," Tsipras said. According to the prime minister, support for labour was necessary for boosting productivity and competitiveness, and the "losses" of the crisis years will be gradually restored, while unemployment was steadily dropping.
He especially highlighted the drop in youth unemployment, which had fallen from 50 pct in August 2014 to 36.8 pct in August 2018, with a 17-year record in the hirings to departures ratio recorded in that year.
Tsipras also cited heartening growth figures in the first half of 2018, including steadily rising exports in defiance of predictions made by international organisations that these will level off.
"The latest official figures show a 16.9 pct increase in exprts in the first nine months of 2018, compared with the same nine months in 2017," he said, while 2017 had seen the biggest rise in foreign direct investments of the last decade, up 86 pct compared to August 2014 and 16.8 pct up compared to Jan-Aug. 2017.
He noted that the turnover for industry had increased by 20.5 pct in August 2018 compared with August 2017, adding that the government's goal was for industry to produce 12 pct of Greece's GDP in the medium term.
The prime minister also noted good news from the tourism sector and signs of recovery in construction and said that the European Commission had revised its forecasts for GDP growth in 2018 upward, while doubling its forecast for private consumption, exports and the surplus, and lowering that for unemployment.
GDP will this year increase significantly for the second consecutive year and the forecasts of international organisations in the following years are even more positive," he said.

The prime minister went on to outline plans for exploiting and further developing infrastructure in northern Greece, saying the ports of Kavala and Alexandroupolis were next in line after that of Thessaloniki, while highlighting plans to modernise the Alexandroupolis-Burgas-Varna rail link between Greece and Bulgaria, as well as a motorway from Thessaloniki to Sofia and Bucharest and a planned rail link from Thessaloniki to Skopje, Belgrade and Budapest.
A top priority for Greece, he added, was to complete the Southern Gas Corridor pipeline projects, such as the TransAdriatic Pipeline (TAP) and the IGB Interconnector and others, such as the LNG Terminal in Revythousa and the FSRU in Alexandroupolis.
"The old production model of the country, even when it seemed to improve its indices, led to impasses for which the Greek people and the business world paid such a high price. For this reason, our developmental planning, the planning of all of us, is entirely the opposite of this," Tsipras said.