Greece's recession-hit businesses face "annihilation", a leading chamber of commerce has warned, as a fatal combination of falling sales and job cuts meant the country was in its worst economic shape for 14 years.
The
association, representing a sector which employs nearly 18pc of the Greek
workforce, presented an annual study forecasting a further drop in sales and
job cuts in an economy where the unemployment rate currently exceeds 25pc.
"Returning to 1984 purchasing
power levels, 1998 employment levels and 1999 salary levels will not help
Greece's economy in 2013," said Vassilis Korkidis, chairman of the
National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce (Esee).
More than 40pc of limited
liability companies and 70.6pc of general and limited partnerships expect a
fall in sales, and one in three businesses in both categories expects to shed
workers next year, the report showed.
"If this situation continues,
the trader sector... will be threatened with annihilation," Mr Korkidis
said. "The recipe of successive (fiscal overhauls) appears to have
failed," he said.
Greece's parliament earlier this
month approved a new round of austerity worth €18.5bn that includes additional
salary and pension cuts and other reforms to be implemented by 2016.
The measures have been prescribed
by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund which have been
propping up the near-bankrupt Greek economy with billions of euros in loans
since 2010.
After a third year of austerity,
eight in ten businesses report a fall in sales and seven in ten have lost
access to bank funding, Korkidis said.
"Europe needs a three-pillar
approach: regain confidence, implement needed structural reforms, provide
growth-enhancing measures," said Gunilla Almgren, president of the
European association of craft, small and medium-sized enterprises (UEAPME).
Development Minister Costis
Hatzidakis said the government had pledged to pay businesses outstanding state
debts of three billion euros by the end of the year.
The state owes private suppliers
more than €8bn in total.
Source: AFP