The Bank of Greece

Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras met on Thursday with Andrea Enria, chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM).

Enria met with Stournaras and other members of the Bank of Greece's administration, as well as with representatives of the managements of Greek banks and the Hellenic Bank Association.

The management of Attica Bank is expected by mid-January to have finalized its plan to reduce the lender's bad loans - which amount to approximately 2.5 billion euros (approximately 65% of its portfolio) - in order to then launch the process to increase its share capital by a total of €490 million. 

Interest-free loans, subsidies and state aid are expected to be included in the government's new housing policy program, which is to be announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the opening of the Thessaloniki International Fair - TIF.

As the government measures its fiscal stance to announce new consumer-intervention measures, a week of revelations is coming starting tomorrow, both on the inflation front and on GDP. The financial staff expects to see the impact on the economy from the high levels of inflation in the economy and revenue.

The administrations of the four major Greek banks are ready to press the button for the abolition of interest on all deposit demand products, savings and current accounts.

Housing loans in 2021 made an impressive finale with the amounts of the loan agreements signed in December reaching a high of 7.5 years, with an annual increase of 100%.

According to the official data of the Bank of Greece, the new financing that was contracted in the last month of last year, approached 160 million euros.

The potential threat of the "D" mutation casts a shadow of uncertainty over the Greek economy, although the Ministry of Finance does not appear pessimistic at the moment, maintaining the forecasts for the economy and the course of tourism.

The secondary loan market is expected to grow in 2021 and rise far above the 100-billion-euro level, while the new securitizations already announced are set to top €20 billion, the Association of Loan and Credit Claims Management Companies (EEDADP) stated on Thursday, on the occasion of its second birthday.

The property market views 2020 as a lost year, as it has backtracked significantly on its course to recovery recorded over the previous couple of years. The pandemic has resulted in the dwindling of the market's main growth driver - i.e. buying interest from abroad - and this is clearly reflected in the figures of the Bank of Greece.

Bank deposits recorded a new 2.5-billion-euro increase last month, as the economic support measures are helping to strengthen the liquidity of households and enterprises, according to data issued on Thursday by the Bank of Greece. The figures showed that deposits at the end of October amounted to €155.7 billion, up 1.7% in just one month from €153.1 billion at end-September.