By Tasos Dasopoulos
An excess of around 1% of GDP is expected to have the primary surplus of 2025, reaching 4.5% of GDP, compared with an official forecast for a surplus of 3.7% of GDP, Eurostat is expected to announce in a few days, along with the remaining financial data from last year.
In particular, on the basis of the data collected by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the primary surplus last year reached 4.5% of GDP, compared with the official forecast for a surplus of 3.7% of GDP. The excess of 0.8% of the official forecast of the Ministry is mainly due to the attempt to combat tax evasion, which brought about around 2.2 billion euros tax revenues mainly from indirect taxes but also to better tax compliance expected by taxpayers. For the same reasons, the general (financial) result of the budget for 2025 was an surplus of 0.9% of GDP, compared with a forecast of a surplus of 0.7% of GDP.
The three revised official targets have been met by the IMF and the Bank of Greece. The IMF, in its latest report on Greece on the basis of Article IV, stressed that due to the overperformance of revenue, the primary surplus of 2025 reached 4.4% of GDP. In fact, it estimated that the primary surplus of 2026 would also reach 3.8% of GDP (against the official forecast of the Ministry for a surplus of 2.8% of GDP), as well as that Greece has the potential to achieve a primary surplus of 2.75% of GDP by 2030.
Financial space for reliefs
According to the Bank of Greece report, if part of the primary result is attributed to additional permanent revenues as a result of structural reforms to tackle tax evasion and/or to contain primary expenditure, as was done in 2024, net primary expenditure in 2025 will record a lower rate of increase than the 2026 budget estimates. This will create a budgetary margin for increased net primary expenditure over the coming years, under the constraints of the new financial framework.
Debt
The general government debt is expected to be announced at 145% of GDP, about 1% of GDP less than the official forecast for debt of 145.9% of GDP. The reduction compared to 2024, when debt reached the end of the year in 154.2% of GDP, reached 8.3% of GDP and was achieved, despite the fact that debt was borne in addition to the annual loan programme (Greece drew 7.7 billion euros from the markets) and from loans made by the country through the Recovery and Durability Fund for private investment. This year, the objective is to reduce the debt further to 136% of GDP, so that Greece will cease to have the lead of debt within the EU.
