The Economist Names Greece Top Performer for 2022

Photo source: European Parliament / Milos Bicanski

Greece is the top economic performer this year among 34 countries, according to The Economist.

The British weekly newspaper ranked Greece as the top performer this year based on five key indicators in its analysis of 34 OECD countries. Greece fared the best in GDP, consumer prices, inflation breadth, share prices, and public net debt as percentage of GDP.

Greece is followed by Spain, Japan, France, Italy, Britain, US, Germany, and Estonia.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis welcomed the announcement. “The Economist ranks Greece as the top 2022 performer among 34 countries, with high growth, narrow inflation breadth, plunging debt-to-GDP ratio and outperforming stock market. Very glad to see that our efforts and reforms are making a real impact. We look forward to 2023,” said Mitsotakis via his twitter account.

Source: The Economist.

The Economist said that despite the challenges impacting world economies this year including inflation squeezing household incomes and stock markets plunging, Greece’s performance was a “pleasant surprise”.

“For the first time in a long time, the economic party is taking place in the Mediterranean,” said the paper referring to other Mediterranean economies such as those of Portugal, Spain and Italy doing well compared to traditional strongholds like Germany which performed poorly.

More specifically, Greece’s GDP from Q4 2021 to Q3 2022 rose by 2.2 percent; consumer prices increased by 7.8 percent from December 2021 to October 2022 with 82.4 percent of products increasing by over 2 percent. Share prices on the Athens Stock Exchange rose 0.8 percent in the 11 months of 2022. Greece reduced its net public debt by -16 percent as a percentage of GDP.