Greek Recovery Fund Unable to Support Businesses

s Greece’s Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF) enters its last stretch, a authorities determination to redirect resources distant from bank-channeled financing tools toward the Hellenic Development Bank is creating superior problems, leaving a fig of afloat eligible concern projects without funding.

According to a missive obtained by Oikonomikos Taxydromos, tourism manufacture executives person raised the alarm with some the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Tourism, warning that the reallocation is efficaciously pushing retired concern plans that were already mature and acceptable to proceed. Banking sources told the work that the fig of approved concern plans is present astir treble the funds still available to beryllium disbursed done the RRF via the banks.

The Harsh Reality

What makes the situation peculiarly achy is that galore of the affected businesses didn’t conscionable explicit an involvement successful investing, they had already spent existent wealth preparing their applications: feasibility studies, technical consultants, vigor assessments, and autarkic auditor fees, each of which are mandatory prerequisites for inclusion successful the program. In different words, they already paid to participate, lone to find themselves unopen out.

This is not a substance of theoretical losses. These are real, already-incurred costs hitting businesses astatine a clip of elevated operating expenses. Preparing an RRF concern record is simply a complex, time-consuming and resource-intensive process and the businesses that went done it did so successful bully faith.

The paradox is hard to ignore. The Recovery Fund itself encouraged businesses to determination quickly, hole their projects, and align with its priorities, including greenish transition, integer modernization, and sustainable investment. Now, a information of those very projects is being near out, not due to the fact that they failed to conscionable the criteria, but simply due to the fact that the wealth has tally out.

What Does This Means for Greek Credibility

This raises a broader credibility question. Greece’s “Greece 2.0” programme amounts to astir €35.95 cardinal and was designed to mobilize implicit €60 cardinal successful concern by 2026. Tourism alone, a assemblage contributing implicit 20% of GDP and presently successful an aggravated concern phase, is seeing billions directed toward upgrades and caller infrastructure. The Recovery Fund leaving retired projects that person already been evaluated and prepared sends a damaging signal, not conscionable astir this peculiar program, but astir the wide reliability of Greece’s concern framework.

The government’s justification centers connected the request to speed up absorption. With strict milestones and an August 2026 deadline, redirecting funds toward tools that tin beryllium deployed faster is seen arsenic necessary. But this represents a cardinal displacement successful priorities, from choosing the champion investments to managing the fastest ones. And that displacement has existent consequences.

Source: tovima.com