Until five years ago and for a decade, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) devastated the Greek economy.
No one could have imagined at the time that, instead of Greece going bankrupt and causing a global economic "Armageddon", as the IMF expected, the weak economy managed to survive repeated crises and emerge stronger than others in the Eurozone, New Money reported.
Under the shadow of a second war in the "vital space" of eastern-southeastern Europe, where the interests of Greece are moving and which threatens to once again "throw into the air" the prices of fuels (liquids and gases) worldwide, the new report of the International Monetary Fund sheds a new "light" on how things could turn out in the real economy, and how they eventually will turn out.
"War" in the Economy
The IMF makes "grey" forecasts for the future, basically worse than those expected by Athens.
This no longer worries Greece as it used to, not because the government repaid and "kicked out" the IMF (instead of "ripping up" the Memoranda), but because after all the blows it received, the country is doing much better on all levels than almost all others in the EU.
Although it seems paradoxical to many - also outside of Greece - our country is and is predicted to remain firmly in the top 5 of the most resilient economies of the Eurozone.
According to the IMF:
Development: predicts that our country will have the 3rd largest in 2023 and the 5th best in 2024, from 4th in 2022. It will be 2 to 3 times higher than the average of the entire Eurozone.
Detail: as the IMF has created a tradition with its "pessimistic" forecasts for our country (which it subsequently revises without justifying them) in its "distant" estimates for 2024, it predicts growth of only 2% instead of the 3% it indicates in the Draft submitted by the government.
However, in his much more "closer and more certain" forecasts for 2023, which ends in about 80 days, he foresees a Growth of 2.5%, which significantly exceeds the 2.3% estimated by Athens.
Inflation: this year, the IMF predicts 4.1%, which is worse (higher) than the government's forecast of 3.8%. And even so, it will be the 3rd best (lowest) price increase in the Eurozone – ahead of only Belgium with 2.5% and Spain with 3.5%.
And overall, the Eurozone this year will have... 2.5 times higher inflation: 10.5% compared to 4.1% or 60% lower in Greece!
For 2024, the IMF predicts a drop in Greek Inflation to 2.8%. Greece will then be the 2nd best in Europe, behind Finland (with 1.9%).
And then, Greece will have inflation 70% lower (!) than the average in the Eurozone (2.8% against 9.4%!)
Unemployment: when almost everywhere else will rise or remain stagnant, the IMF predicts that Greece will have the greatest reduction in Unemployment.
Only Spain can be compared with Greece because it shows a decrease of 1.6 points from 2022 to 2024 (from 12.9% to 11.3%). But this is only half that of Greece (12.4 to 9.3%)!
However, a "black hole" in the real economy remains that Greece maintains the highest current account deficit in Europe - and not only that!
This is due to the huge dependence on foreign fuel and energy over time (despite the very high prices due to precision and taxes) but also to the massive imports of materials and machinery that come to cover the country's explosive increase in direct investments implemented in last three years in Greece (and are expected to intensify in 2024 and in the following years).
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