Greece’s draft 2020 budget includes continued support for households and businesses in the face of repercussions from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, in tandem with best exploiting European recovery funds.
One measures included in the draft budget is another installment plan for covering arrears to the state, namely, for businesses and individual taxpayers that failed to meet payments of a previous such 120-month plan.
Additionally, an 84-million heating oil subsidy will be implemented this year, rather than commence in 2021.
The crucial figure in the draft budget is a target of 7.5 percent GDP growth for 2021, in a bid to try and ameliorate the coronavirus-related economic crash of the current year.
Other actions listed in the draft budget include a 3-percentage point reduction in social security contributions of wage-earners in the private sector, to the tune of 816 million euros for state coffers. Additionally, the state will subsidize new six-month hirings from among long-term unemployed people, a program aimed to create 100,000 new job spots – at least temporarily – for 2021, at a cost of 302 million euros.
Another “respite” for Greece’s middle class is the suspension of a “solidarity tax” on taxpayers in the private sector, a measure expected to cost the state 767 million euros.
Other measures are a subsidy program for primary residence mortgage holders, at 280 million euros, and continued reductions in VAT rates for certain categories of goods and services, particularly in sector adversely affected by the pandemic.
