Speech by Chairman Mr. Theodore Fessas at the Annual General Assembly of SEV 2016

Your Excellency President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. President of the European Commission, Ladies and Gentlemen,

We thank you warmly for being here tonight.

We would like to thank, in particular, President Jean Claude Juncker, a great European leader and friend of Greece, for honouring us with his presence tonight.

LEAP TO 2018

The key message of my speech tonight is: “AT LAST, LET’S GET THE JOB DONE RIGHT, NOW”. In other words, all those responsible for the future of our country at European and national levels must do all the appropriate things and do them now.

We want everyone to do their job right. As we have to do ours. And most of us, we do. We and our employees keep our businesses standing, pay our obligations consistently and feed the economy.

Where, in our opinion, should the bar be raised? What facts do we expect to hear from the country’s Prime Minister in our 2018 General Meeting?

Making an optimistic projection to the future, we expect to hear that in 2017:

• The Greek economy ran at 3.5% growth rate.
• Tackling tax evasion, contribution evasion and smuggling, i.e. tax fraud, yielded €4 billion additional revenue in 2017 enabling an equivalent decrease in taxes and contributions.
• Total investment exceeded € 25 billion.
• Greece has been borrowing on the international markets at a ten-year rate below 3%.
• NPLs have dropped by 30%.
• Unemployment declined below 20%.
• Greece and its partners agreed to cut the primary surplus target for 2018.

All this and much more must be shared by the country’s Prime Minister in two years. It is everyone’s ambition and demand.

Hence, the almost disastrous, traumatic 2015 will seem like a distant nightmare in two years from now. Our international partners, the Greek political system, employers, employees and the society will have built a new relationship of trust and cooperation.

Dear friends,

The work on our final exit from the crisis has to be done properly and systematically; with all the right people who will take the ownership and implementation responsibility. And it has to be done immediately. Then all of us will be proud.

To this end, today I would like to contribute some concrete thoughts on how we can achieve it.

Let us begin with a brief review of the major international challenges and the current Greek economy condition…

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