El-Erian: Samaras has achieved a lot, but…

“Not all is well. After enduring a sharp collapse in economic activity, Greece is still far from the rebound in growth that it desperately needs”

“The government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has achieved a lot over the past two years” Mohamed A. El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, stressed in his article on Bloomberg mentioning that:

“It has narrowed the budget deficit, improved tax administration, reduced spending inefficiencies and increased the transparency and accountability of government operations. The country has also reduced its trade deficit and the risks associated with what was a heavily over-extended and under-capitalized domestic banking system”.

However, he highlights that “That said, not all is well. After enduring a sharp collapse in economic activity, Greece is still far from the rebound in growth that it desperately needs,”.

Mohamed A. El-Erian is Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and a member of its International Executive Committee, Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council and former CEO and co-Chief Investment Officer of PIMCO.

At the beginning of the article he states that “two years after the elections which were seen by many as a referendum on the government’s austerity measures, the coalition government that emerged from those elections has steered Greece”. But, as he states, “the attendant sharp drop in the government’s borrowing costs, and investors’ hearty appetite for new issues of Greek sovereign and bank bonds, overstate the domestic improvements”.