The content of the Thessaloniki International Fair package is expected to be finalized in the coming days, with Pavlos Marinakis stating among other things that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will give special emphasis to demographics, as well as to economic relief for pensioners, the middle class and families.
Marinakis: Family support measures in TIF “package”
The goal of the measures to be announced at the TIF is for them to be immediately felt in citizens’ pockets, as the Prime Minister in his Sunday post made it clear that “surpluses must be returned to citizens, every available fiscal space must be utilized for the benefit of society”.
The cost of the announcements is estimated at approximately 1.5 billion euros with 1 billion euros coming from much better than projected budget performance both in revenues and expenses, and 500 million euros being saved from the escape clause for defense spending. The goal is for the measures to have a permanent character, away from subsidy logic, with emphasis on tax reduction.
Among the measures being discussed are:
- Tax reductions for middle incomes, with interventions in brackets and rates of the tax scale.
- Tax relief for families with children to support families, while scenarios also include increasing the tax-free threshold.
- Reduction of tax burden on rental income, alongside providing incentives to owners to make available to the market closed houses they own.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, before announcing the measures, will travel to Thessaloniki on August 28, where he will meet with the city’s productive sectors.
Emphasis on demographics
However, the Prime Minister is expected to give special emphasis to demographics, something particularly stressed by Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister and government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis during yesterday’s briefing of political editors, the first after the summer holidays.
Mr. Marinakis emphasized that the government will take initiatives in the coming period to address low birth rates and strengthen demographics. “The information I have is that a significant part of the Prime Minister’s announcements at the upcoming Thessaloniki International Fair will focus on supporting the Greek family, particularly with provisions to support even more our fellow citizens who are parents of large families or very large families or those who have greater need, what we call the Greek family, the middle class” Mr. Marinakis emphasized during the political editors’ briefing.
He then referred to what has been done so far to address the problem. “It’s not just the allowance given for the birth of a child, it’s the allowance given to a new mother equivalent to the minimum wage for 9 months, it’s supporting new parents with places in nurseries, the fact that many of the increases we give have additional targeting to families, but it’s true that we didn’t expect all this to solve, nor did it solve this huge problem, a wound both for Greece and for many other countries which is the demographic issue” he underlined and added: “Personally, I believe it should be and will be at the top of our government’s priorities and every government’s and, especially, as a young politician who sees something like this developing into a ‘ticking time bomb’ for many countries, every policy of ours should pass through the filter of family support. It’s the most important thing both for economic reasons and for survival reasons for our country as a whole”.
Source: ANA-MPA
