Economist: Greece top ‘economic winner’ of 2022

The Economist has ranked Greece as among the “economic winners” of 2022, with the best overall performance among 34 advanced countries surveyed, in an article unveiled this week and entitled “2022’s unlikely economic winners. Which countries performed best and worst this year?”

According to the London-based weekly magazine, “…for the first time in a while, the economic party is happening in the Mediterranean…Top of our list is Greece. Other countries that plumbed the economic depths in the early 2010s, such as Portugal and Spain, also score highly. They are not the only pleasant surprises. Despite political chaos, Israel did well. Meanwhile, despite political stability, Germany is an under-performer. Two Baltic countries, Estonia and Latvia, which won plaudits in the 2010s for speedy reforms, come bottom.”

The Economist said the economic performance rankings are based on five key indicators, namely, GDP, the inflation rate, inflation breadth (the number of products that increased by more than 2 percent), stock market performance and government debt.

Greek GDP increased 2.2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2022, while Italy’s was 1.8 percent; Spain 1.5 percent and Germany 1.3 percent.

Consumer prices increased 7.8 percent in Greece in the first 10 months of 2022 and 82.4 percent of products increased by more than 2 percent.

Greece was also one of the few countries where bourse prices rose (0.8 percent) over the first 11 months of 2022, with other markets dropping by as much as 15 percent worldwide. Finally, net Greek government debt posted the biggest reduction, falling 16 percent as a percentage of GDP, while in other countries the same figure rose or dropped by much smaller percentages.