Bank of Greece Governor Giorgos Provopoulos presented the central bank’s annual report, and gave a speech at the 81st annual meeting of the bank’s shareholders (27.02), where he announced his estimate that Greece will return to growth in 2014, after six years of recession. He said that it is reasonable to forecast that 2013 was the last year of recession based on all the available data.

However, if this forecast is to become a reality, not only must the conditions contributing to the improved outlook remain unchanged, but they also have to be taken further. According to the central banker, the main priorities must be to reduce the bureaucratic cost of businesses, thus making the public sector more effective and creating a stable and beneficial tax framework that will encourage investments. Regarding the banking sector Provopoulos claimed that Greek system was resilient and that Greek bank accounts were safe.

Furthermore, Provopoulos announced that the results of the stress tests for Greek banks would be published next week. He explained that the simulated stress test of the Greek banking system adopted a conservative approach, in order to ensure its credibility as a test.