How does one sustain a business in the face of capital controls limiting bank withdrawals to €60 per day? Does anyone go shopping in an era of massive uncertainty and risk? Two journalists, Dimitra Kessenides for  Bloomberg Press Agency, and Karolina Tagaris for Reuters News Agency, have looked for some answers to these questions.

For entrepreneurs across the country, the broken down economy has been the mother of invention. Small businesses have sprouted up in the years of the crisis: designers selling clothing and jewelry, wine makers and olive growers trying to compete on a global scale, shop owners of all stripes. However, more than half of small and medium sized businesses, which account for about 86% of jobs in the country, are already behind in salary payments. Most businesses are unable to pay suppliers, or to carry through with orders placed from abroad. Customers are nowhere in sight.

Vassilis Korkidis, head of the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce (ESEE), a business lobby group, listed some of the problems faced by small and medium sized enterprises on account of bank closures and the cash limits suffocating the economy: no access to e-banking for imports, a need to pay up front for supplies, goods stuck at Greek customs because businesses do not have cash to pay the levies. Even if a business has the money to pay for supplies on delivery, they cannot because it's trapped in the bank and cannot be wired abroad.

A young entrepreneur, Pavlina Papailiopoulou, discussed with Bloomberg her decision to start her own business in Greece and the hurdles she faced. When asked whether she would consider leaving the country again, she said: "I grew up believing I can do whatever I want to do, with all its difficulties. I will be really upset if there is no space for that here."