The Head of the Parliamentary Budget Office, Fragkiskos Koutentakis said on Thursday that the Greek economy is slowly returning to growth with rising employment and wages.
These were the conclusions of the Budget Office's latest report which Koutentakis presented to the relevant parliamentary committee.
According to the report's findings the nine-month fiscal result for the execution of the state budget was improved by 1.1 billion euros compared with the same period in the previous year.
However the Head of the Parliamentary Budget Office of Koutentakis also highlighted some less encouraging signs, such as low inflation and the rising current accounts deficit, as well as a series of uncertainties affect the course of the Greek economy.
Among these he listed international conditions resulting from the trade war between the U.S. and China, developments in Italy and their impact on bond yields in the Eurozone, which combined with the large number of non-performing loans had a negative impact on liquidity, and court decisions to pay back wage and pension cuts, creating a precedent for similar litigation in the future.
Koutentakis also singled out the two cases concerning Folli Follie and the violation of Chinese capital controls using POS, saying this sent a "bad message" about corporate governance procedures.
On growth and inflation, he noted that the former was now at 2 pct of GDP but the latter showed the economy was performing well below its true potential, while he underlined the need for exports to grow in step with the economy.
Presenting Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures, he disagreed that there was "overtaxation" in Greece, which he said ranked 7th among the 16 Eurozone countries for total revenues from taxes and social insurance contributions as a percentage of GDP.
While income tax was below the Eurozone average in Greece, however, taxation on goods and services was the highest at 15.8 pct, compared with an average of 11.9 pct for the Eurozone.
