International Herald Tribune Investment Summit: Greece at the Crossroads: Can Reforms bring Competitiveness and Investment?
31 Mar 2010 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth
By: Emanuel Raptis, International Economics and Policy student and Trainee at the Swedish Trade Council
During Monday and Tuesday, March 22 and 23, I attended the International Herald Tribune Investment Summit in Athens, Greece with the theme “Greece at the crossroads: Can Reforms bring Competitiveness and Investment?â€. The main issue that was to be addressed and discussed during this conference was the issue of the low, and falling, competitiveness of the Greek economy. Several ministers attended the conference, giving speeches and discussed what kind of reforms that would help Greece regain its competitiveness and bring investment. Furthermore, speakers from the World Economic Forum, Barclay’s Wealth, Invest in Greece Agency, and other organizations also gave their valuable insights on what needs to be done in order to achieve this.
Since I came to Athens, Greece has been in the spotlight of the financial markets due to its large budget deficit and public debt. This has led to anxiety about whether the Greek government will be able to collect the funds needed in order to service the interest rates on its debt as well as the upcoming debt maturities this year. As a consequence, several of the credit institutes has downgraded Greece, making it even more difficult, and most important more expensive, for Greece to borrow these needed funds on the market. As serious as this is issue may be it is mainly a problem coming from the underlying fact that Greek productivity has been lagging behind for a long period. Therefore, this conference was very much needed and although it came too late – the crisis has shown the real weaknesses of the economy and by doing so, it has also identified many opportunities for reforms that can be made to change the path of the economy.
One thing that especially caught my interest was to learn about the Greek Ministry of Economy, Development, and Maritime’s operational program put together to increase Greek competitiveness by efforts aimed at stimulating the fields of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Research. One of the core pillars in this program involves making it easier and more accessible to start new businesses already at the student level by the use of for example Science Parks and Business Labs, and a strong connection to the industry integrated in the education. Here, our own school, JIBS, stands a perfect example of how effective this approach can be.
For more information about the issues discussed at the conference, here is the programme.
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i’m curious, were there any solid results from the conference?