The Greek economy continues to show considerable resilience in an unfavorable and uncertain economic environment, stressed the Acting Minister of Finance Theodoros Pelagidis, commenting on ELSTAT’s announcement of GDP growth of 2.1% in the first quarter of this year. He also stated that the conditions for stronger economic growth of the Greek economy compared to the European average for 2023 are emerging.

In detail, the statement of Mr. Pelagidis is as follows:

“In an unfavorable and uncertain international economic environment, the results of the National Accounts for the first quarter of 2023 were published today. The Greek economy continues to show significant resilience, both in terms of GDP development, and mainly in terms of certain individual its sizes. Based on available seasonally adjusted data, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in volume terms in the first quarter of 2023 showed an increase of 2.1%. The increase was significant both in private consumption (increase by 2.3%), and in fixed capital investments (increase by 8.2%).

However, the most important result is the positive developments in the current account balance. More specifically, exports of goods and services showed an increase of 8.9% compared to the first quarter of 2022, while imports of goods and services showed a lower increase of 5.6% compared to the first quarter of 2022 .

Particularly, exports of goods increased by 10.6%, while goods imports increased by only 3.2%. These positive developments are noted despite the fact that the expenditure of the Greek economy is growing faster than that of its trading partners. It demonstrates a significant progress in the competitiveness of domestically produced goods.

The main components of GDP (investments, exports, consumption) have a significant rise, and highlight the conditions for stronger economic growth of the Greek economy compared to the European average for 2023. These performances are even noted despite (a) the current change in reserves, which leads to a decrease in the total gross capital formation by 0.7 %, when gross fixed capital formation increased by 8.2%, and (b) the revision to the estimate of the growth rate of the first quarter of 2022 to 7.8% from 7.5%, which creates “negative base effect” in the calculation of the GDP of the first quarter of 2023″.