Greece has recorded significant growth, OECD’s Gurria says: Skills need to be upgraded

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“Greece has recorded significant growth,” OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said on Wednesday in an interview with ‘Ta Nea’ newspaper.

• Referring to a ‘Financial Times’ report which said that the Greek prime minister had turned into a great reformist, Gurria noted that this was the general view. Greece has stabilised its public finances and has met the institutions’ demands, he said, but challenges remain. While the same challenges may exist in many states, they are much more relevant to Greece because the country has a much greater distance to cover, coming from a lower starting point,” the OECD chief added.

Gurria said that productivity is a priority, involves investments but also skills, which need to be upgraded, especially in light of economic digitisation. On the one hand, because Greek workers need to prepare themselves so they are less vulnerable to digital transformation and, on the other hand, in order to enable Greece to exploit the opportunities of digital transformation. Upgrading skills concern education, as well as companies, which should help workers for the benefit of both, Gurria said.

• Asked about the reference in the OECD’s latest report to the government’s intention to reduce the primary surplus target to 2.5 percent, he said the fact that Greece had a primary surplus was “incredible” and “perfect”. Deciding whether this primary suprlus should be 2.5 percent or 3.5 percent of GDP, he added, was “a technical question”. According to the OECD chief, the fact that Greece has a stable and sustainable primary surplus indicates that the country is “in a better position to reduce the final debt,” stressing that this was an important factor.

He said that Greece has been given and successfully negotiated significant margins for the debt as a result of good performance but also the inherent needs of the country. Even if the nominal debt has not been cut, he added, “you have conditions that will allow a recovery of sustainable growth in the medium and long term”. A discussion on lowering the nominal debt could be held at a later time, Gurria said, since “conditions are not mature enough now”, but Greece has margins and long grace period as well as a flexible way to pay off interest.

Source: ANA-MPA

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