Η δημογραφική πρόκληση που αντιμετωπίζει η Ελλάδα και οι μεσοπρόθεσμες επιπτώσεις της στην ελληνική οικονομία καθώς και η αναγκαιότητα μεταρρυθμίσεων στο Δημόσιο Τομέα αποτέλεσαν το επίκεντρο της τοποθέτησης του ανεξάρτητου Βουλευτή Χάρη Θεοχάρη στη Γερουσία κατά τη διάρκεια της τρίτης ημέρας της επίσκεψής του στην Ουάσιγκτον.
Παράλληλα παρουσίασε τις προϋποθέσεις για επανεκκίνσηη της ελληνικής οικονομίας κάνοντας ειδική μνεία στην μελέτη με τους κ.κ. Χριστοδουλάκη και Νεκτάριο.
Στη συνέχεια ο κ. Θεοχάρης επισκέφθηκε τον Λευκό Οίκο όπου ενημερώθηκε για την αμερικανική επιχειρηματική παρουσία στη ΔΕΘ τον ερχόμενο Σεπτέμβριο και αντάλλαξε απόψεις με τους κκ Steven Munisteri, αναπληρωτή βοηθό του Αμερικανού προέδρου, Diane Qubral, διευθύντρια δημόσιου διαλόγου της Αμερικανικής υπηρεσίας Εμπορίου και Ανάπτυξης (USTDA) και Peter Cazamias της αμερικανική διοίκησης για μικρές επιχειρήσεις (SBA) για τις προοπτικές ανάπτυξης των εμπορικών σχέσεων της Ελλάδας με τις ΗΠΑ.
Σημεία ομιλίας
Demographics is our number one issue. In the DSA recently released by the IMF, it is said in the Debt Sustainability Analysis that we can have only a 1% growth in the long-term because we have to fight declining population. Growth comes from productivity and population.So as your population goes down, you have to have huge strides in terms of gaining productivity to be able to grow. Greece has to grow 4-5% for up to ten years if we are to get out of this crisis and set all we can get, in my view all the way to 2022 it’s 1-2%.
Unless we change tactics, we change and shape up the public sector and strengthen the institutional structure of Greece; and I am one of the advocates of the presidential democracy, I do not believe anymore in the system that we have; Cyprus, France, the US have all presidential democracies; the powers are really seperated; you cannot have without true seperation of powers, a true tackling of graft and corruption so all those things have to happen now so that we set up a new period of growth.
And I will leave you with this number just to understand; recently a friend of mine professor Christodoulakis with whom we’ve made a proposal for the tax issues, social security and the primary surpluses for Greece, he calculated the GDP of Greece per capita from 1821 all the way to today. The GDP per capita was flat 1821 till 1953; so we were flat. We just increased the population but that was it. In 1953, the government changed the law, protection of investments etc and it went right up, just skyrocketed from 1953 all the way to 2010, just like that. 2009 the crisis ensured and it went down by 25-27% of GDP we lost during the crisis. Still, from 1953 to now six times higher; we grew six times from 1953 per capita including the crisis itself. The chances are that we will continue flat; the big fight for Greece is to return to this miracle, like a tiger as the economists say, to go again up the same way that we’ve done since 1953 and for that we need to liberalize our economy, to have closer ties with people who love Greece, like Greece and want to invest in Greece and want to make money with Greece.