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Jobseekers queue to enter a Labor Force Employment Organization job center in Athens. (Bloomberg) |
ATHENS (AP) ― Greece’s economy will start to recover next year and by 2020 will reach pre-crisis, and probably higher, levels of prosperity after six years of deep recession, the prime minister said Saturday.
Antonis Samaras said most of the efforts to get the country out of the crisis have been completed and that revenue will exceed spending in 2013, excluding debt repayment.
“Greece has turned the corner ... After the end of the year, we will achieve a new lightening of the debt burden, which our creditors have committed to,” Samaras said in a speech opening up the annual international trade fair in Thessaloniki, Greece’s No. 2 city.
Samaras said his optimism was fueled by data that showed the economy shrank less than expected in the first half of 2013 and by what he termed a “record” rise in the number of tourists, which could add “more than 11 billion euros ($14.43 billion) directly, and 30 billion euros indirectly, into the economy.”
Despite the upbeat speech, there were still signs that a sense of normalcy is far from being restored. Authorities restricted access to the trade fair grounds to keep protesters a kilometer (more than a half-mile) away from there and another site where Samaras visited local businesspeople. Most of the city center has been cut off to traffic since Friday and nearly 4,500 police officers patrolled the area.
Samaras himself stayed in the city less than five hours, forgoing, for the second straight year, the traditional long news conference that every premier used to give on the day following the inauguration.
Thessaloniki police said an estimated 17,000 anti-austerity protesters took part in three separate demonstrations Saturday evening.
A rally called by the country’s two largest unions ended peacefully; one by pro-communist unionists went by mostly without incident, although a few farmers drove a truck to one of the international fair gates and dumped large quantities of tomatoes and peaches in protest.
A third rally, by opponents of a Canadian-led gold mining project east of Thessaloniki and joined by anarchists, ended with minor scuffles with police when protesters started throwing rocks and bottles. Police responded with tear gas and detained an unknown number of protesters.
