Enhancing the liquidity of companies and accelerating their investment plans are a priority of the government’s financial staff, as the government realizes that private investment combined with the funds of the Development Fund will turn the country into a vast construction site in the next three or four years and will keep growth rates high.

Recently, the Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Theodoros Skylakakis, speaking to the members of “HELLENIC PRODUCTION – Industry Roundtable for Growth”, referred to the effort to reduce the investment gap caused by the ten-year crisis and exacerbated by the pandemic, arguing that the restart of the economy goes through increasing business liquidity and profitability through the additional reduction of company taxation.

At the same time, he stressed that the National Recovery Plan includes all kinds of reforms, many of which concern the improvement of the business and investment environment but also basic initiatives through loans and specific sectoral subsidies, and pointed out that for the first time such an investment tool has such a large proportion of private investment participation.

The sharp drop in lending rates as a result of market confidence for the day after in the Greek economy, the reduction of profit tax rates from 24% to 22%, the further reduction of insurance contributions by three percentage points, the reduction by 20 percentage points of the tax advance, the 100% reduction for research and development expenditures, the increase of loan funding by 4-5 billion euros per year, by banks but also other facilities, regarding the form and duration of depreciation have created an enviable investment environment that Greek businessmen have never experienced before.

That is why at least 60 large business groups from all sectors of the economy, which are well aware of this, have launched investments of hundreds of millions of euros to be at the starting point of the restart of the global economy facing their foreign competitors on an equal footing.

RES development

Investments of 3.4 billion euros, with the digitization of networks and the development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), but also the entry into telecommunications are at the center of PPC’s new business plan. The new business plan for the period 2021-2023, as stated by CEO G. Stassis, includes investments in the electricity transmission networks in order to support RES, but also in the growing market of electric vehicles. The transformation of the company includes the utilization of the 242,000 kilometers of electricity networks of the power transmission authority for the use of optical fibers in order for PPC to evolve into a provider of services in telecommunications.

Energy – infrastructure

GEK TERNA group is promoting a very ambitious investment program of 4 billion euros that will create 20,000 jobs in energy and infrastructure. RES installation projects worth 700 million euros, storage projects through pumped storage worth 800 million euros, waste management projects worth 200 million euros and electricity generation projects from natural gas worth 300 million euros are underway. In terms of infrastructure, the concessions of the airport in Kastelli and the Casino in Elliniko are the ones that stand out.

Motor Oil has created a new naphtha treatment plant. This investment with a total budget of 310 million euros will help increase the production of high value-added gasoline, as well as kerosene, and hydrogen.

Mytilineos has acquired a portfolio of 20 under development photovoltaic parks with a total capacity of 1.48 GW. Their construction will be completed by the end of 2023, with a total budget of 888 million euros.

A new era

Hellenic Petroleum is, in turn, investing 130 million euros for a photovoltaic park in Kozani. The goal is for the park to become operational in the first quarter of 2020. It will generate zero emissions for at least 75,000 households.

The new plant at Sapes, in Rodopi, and an additional 250m euros in five-year investments are leading the Pharmaten pharmaceutical industry into a new era. The goal of the purely exporting Greek pharmaceutical industry is the development and availability of targeted controlled drug release technologies, which can reduce the frequency of administration and improve the lives of millions of citizens.

A “frozen investment” due to the pandemic is restarting and will give strong breath to the construction industry. This is the expansion of the “Eleftherios Venizelos” airport in order to increase its capacity from 26 million passengers (in 2019) to 33 million. The investment will exceed 500 million euros.

Elval has completed the first phase of its investment plan in Inofyta amounting to 150 million euros for the installation of a new hot roller for aluminum production and has started the next two-year phase of the program.