Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced financial aid for house tenants and pensioners on Tuesday, which will be funded by budget savings after the country reported a better-than-expected 2024 primary surplus.
The country’s primary surplus came in at 4.8% of economic output last year, or 11.4 billion euros ($13.11 billion), according to a first reading of 2021-2024 fiscal data released by the Greek statistics office on Tuesday. The figure – which excludes debt servicing costs, social security and local administration budgets – beat the government’s estimate for a primary surplus of 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP).
“Robust growth along with cracking down on tax evasion and a series of other structural measures brought in additional revenues which have overshot the targets we had set,” Mitsotakis said in a televised public address. “Despite strict European fiscal rules, a big part of that can now return to the citizens.”
Greece has emerged from a 2009-2018 debt crisis, which shaved off a quarter of its output, with its economy outpacing its euro zone peers and has increased monthly minimum wages by a cumulative 35% to 880 euros since 2019.
Many Greeks have demanded higher wages to cope with rising housing and food costs, but the country needs to maintain primary budget surpluses to make sure public debt – still the highest in the euro zone – is sustainable.
Mitsotakis said on Tuesday that the government will pay a month’s rent to house tenants and offer a 250-euro allowance to low-income pensioners once a year starting from this year. Part of the savings will be also used to increase public investments by an annual 500 million euros to help speed up public projects and create jobs. Greece’s debt has fallen by more than 40 percentage points since 2021 to 153.6% of GDP in 2024, the data showed. It is projected to drop further this year.
Source Homevior.in
