Greek minister at Davos: FDIs in 2022 roughly 7 bln€; confident of 2023 elex result

Greek Development & Investments Minister Adonis Georgiadis took his “bullish” pitch for would-be foreign investors to Davos on Wednesday, speaking from the “Greek House” on the sidelines of the prestigious World Economic Forum held at the Swiss resort.

“We want to do even better in 2023 … I believe we’ll (ruling New Democracy party) win the election (in 2023) and that there won’t be a problem in terms of investment flows,” he said, citing a general election that must be held in the first half of the year and on the back of several high-profile investments by multinationals (Pfizer, Microsoft, Αmazon) in the country over the past four years.

Georgiadis, among the most outspoken and combative ministers in the Mitsotakis government’s Cabinet, also took repeated shots at the main opposition, leftist SYRIZA party, which was in power between 2015 and 2019.

“When Greek citizens voted us into government the country had the worst reputation; Greece’s image was terrible … investors blocked phone numbers beginning with the code +030,” he said tongue-in-cheek, referring to the country code prefix for Greece.

He estimated FDIs in Greece last year as reaching seven billion euros, with privatizations “all on course”, sans the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport of Athens, which he said did not attract a satisfactory bid amid the pandemic.

Referring to the all important tourism industry, he said 2023 travel and tourism revenues will exceed 2019 pre-pandemic levels, possibly the sole or one of the few countries to post such a performance, as he opined, and even in the face of the “vanished” markets of Russia, Ukraine and China.