FinMin: Return to growth in 2012

Finance minister George Papaconstantinou predicted that Greece will return to positive growth rates in 2012, in a newspaper interview appearing on Sunday.

“The changes we are making today in the state will produce visible results of better services to the citizens in the next 2-3 years,” he said in an interview with the Sunday newspaper To Vima.

“The return to positive growth rates as of 2012 will have a tangible effect in the market and on job positions,” the minister added.

Papaconstantinou further noted the seven structural changes planned over the coming quarter which, he said, will change the structure and operation of the economy.

Those changes, namely the opening of closed-shop professions, deregulation of services, simplification of licensing procedures for setting up businesses, abolition of obstacles to investments, new labor relations, denationalisation and restructuring of the DEKO (public utilities and organisations) and liberalisation of the energy market, “will shakeups and upsets in the sectors that need to change, but, chiefly, will result in new opportunities”.

Papaconstantinou stressed that the country has no margins to delay, in the coming quarter or in any other quarter, as this would put the financing at risk and is also the demand of the social whole.

“The long-term effort needed for our country to become what it deserves to be, to take advantage of all its prospects,, and to rid our lives of those structures that are holding us back, does not mean long-term recession and lack of a prospect,” he added.