The Prime Minister Antonis Samaras presented his new growth plan at the Benaki Museum on Tuesday evening, where he outlined the main points and lashed out against the opposition. Mr. Samaras’ plans for the next seven years are based on radical measures that will increase the GDP by 54.5 billion euros and contribute to the creation of 770,000 new jobs.
Mr. Samaras claimed that over the next four years he intends to recover the 50 billion lost since 2009 by investing in tourism, primary production, energy and research & technology, all of which can generate billions of euros of revenue and new jobs. The Prime Minister added that his plans have not included an estimated 300 billion euros from energy.
Even though the Prime Minister’s speech was meant to focus on his growth plan, he was highly critical of the opposition for posing dilemmas in the elections and argued that “the country is about to take off; it is the most critical moment, it is the last shot and nobody can keep the country down. That is that the people are called upon to decide: whether to go forward or back to the crisis”.
The New Democracy leader announced that he intends to reduce the rate of all taxes, without however giving any indication as to when this might occur. Nevertheless, Mr. Samaras promised to reduce the general VAT to 12%, limit income tax to 33% and reduce the tax on business profits to 15%.
According to the Prime Minister’s plan, Greece will return to the pre-crisis levels of prosperity by 2020 and repeated his claim that there will be no new across-the-board measures or bailouts.
