During the last decades the Greek economy is evolving into a service economy with a significant reduction in the participation of manufacturing, which is also recorded in the Eurostat data. And despite the “signs” of recovery, the contribution of manufacturing to the total gross added value of Greece is on the way down.
Today, the Greek economy has one of the lowest manufacturing rates in Europe and according to Eurobank’s weekly report “7 Days Economy”, the sector contributed 10.4% of all gross value added at current prices and 7.9% of total employment in 2022. This means that for every 100 euros of gross value added produced in the Greek economy in 2022, 10.4 euros came directly from manufacturing, while for every 100 employed people around 8 worked in manufacturing.
As pointed out, after the great decline of the 2008-2013 period, the manufacturing sector in Greece is in a recovery-expansion phase, with the rate of increase in production accelerating in the last four years.
More specifically, the manufacturing production index in the country strengthened on an annual basis by 4.2% in 2023, from 4.5% in 2022, based on sectors with a high relative weight such as those of food, petroleum products, metal products, pharmaceuticals and non-metallic mineral products.
In addition, in the four-year period 2020-2023 the average annual growth rate of the manufacturing output index almost doubled to 4.1% from 2.2% in the six-year period 2014-2019, a period marked by the pandemic, the creation of the Recovery and Resilience Fund, the energy crisis and the intense geopolitical uncertainty. According to the bank’s analysts, these disruptions created needs – some less and some more permanent – and opportunities which can partially explain the acceleration of the rate of increase in manufacturing production.
Despite this, the share of manufacturing in Greece (10.4% in terms of gross value added) is still considerably lower than in the Eurozone (16.6%), falling short of the corresponding shares of Southern European countries such as Portugal ( 14.1%) and Spain (12.5%).
Among the 20 eurozone economies excluding Ireland, Slovakia had the largest manufacturing share of total gross value added at 22.8%, followed by: Slovenia (22.6%), Germany (20.4%), Finland (18.1%), Lithuania (17.9%), Austria (17.7%), Italy (16.6%), Eurozone (16.6%), Estonia (14.9%), Latvia (14 .7%), Portugal (14.1%), Belgium (14.1%), Croatia (14.0%), Netherlands (12.7%), Spain (12.5%), France (10.7 %), Greece (10.4%), Malta (7.5%), Cyprus (6.0%) and Luxembourg (4.2%).
According to market executives, it must be emphasized that the adversities have also highlighted new possibilities that Greece can rely on in order to plan the “next day” on a more solid basis.
And this at a time when manufacturing is considered a key point for the healthy and safe development of an economy.
