Greece
Country Facts
Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges
Greece's economic recovery continued through 2017. The data show that economic climate have reached levels close to those of the end of 2014. The third assessment of the Greek program approaches to a successful completion and this fact increases the expectations for improved liquidity conditions and a positive macroeconomic outlook.
The main achievements of Greek economy in 2017 can be summarized as follows:
•Economic climate reinforcement in 2017
The economic climate indicator increased to 101.0 on December 2017, at the highest level since 2014. This development was linked to improvements of the indicators of business expectations in industry and construction as well as the consumer confidence index.
•GDP growth in FY:2017 close to the official forecast of 1.6% y-o-y
It is the first time in 11 years that economic activity has increased four quarters in a row. The current momentum in activity, along with positive confidence effects in Q4:2017 creates a positive carry of about 0.5 pps for GDP growth in FY:2018.
•Government bond prices reaches historical highs
Greek bonds were marked by important events that strengthened the confidence of the markets and pushed government bond prices to historical highs. In line with the downward trend in government yields, the spread between Greek and German 10-year government bond yields has declined significantly since the beginning of the year by 321 basis points, reaching 508 bps at the end of November and 369 bps at the end of 2017.
•Positive price indices in industry, services, tourism and trade
The trend of the industry sector was positive as the production index indicator increased by 0.8% y-o-y. The turnover indicator in services sector increased in 2017 by 3.6% on an annual basis.
The surplus in the tourism & travel industry increased by € 154 million, as arrivals increased by 8.4% and average spending revenues per journey increased by 6.1%.
Turnover and volume indicators, in retail trade, during the first 10 months of the year 2017, increased by 1.0% and 1.6% respectively.
•Inflation Price rises in 2017 after four years of deflation
The Greek Economy returns to positive inflation rate of 1.1% following four years of deflation.
•Reduction in Unemployment Rate and increase in employee’s hirings
The unemployment rate declined in the third quarter of 2017 to 20.2%, according to provisional data, reaching 21.5% in the first nine months of the year, while employment was increased by 2.1%.
•The deficit of the state budget was below the yearly target
State-owned budget deficit, in the period January - November, in cash-based, had a loss of € -774 million against a budget deficit target of € -2.35 billion.
Capital Market Information
Greek bonds were marked by important events that pushed government bond prices to historical highs.
Economic Development and Outlook
•Positive trends for the major ATHEX Indices
Positive trends for all major ATHEX Indices and especially the ATHEX Composite Share Price Index increased by 24.66% y-o-y, the FTSE/Athex Large Cap increased by 19.67% y-o-y, the FTSE/Athex Mid Cap increased by 58.98% y-o-y and the FTSE/Athex Global Traders increased by 32.53% y-o-y. Also, the capitalization of Athens Exchanges reached € 54 billion on year-end while the average transactions value was € 58 million.
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