Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras estimates that it will take less than twenty years for Greece's GDP to reach the same level as the rest of Europe.
In an interview with the Netherlands newspaper NRC, he was asked "how many years it will take for Greece's GDP to return to pre-crisis levels". Stournaras replied that "We are more ambitious than that. We want, in less than twenty years, to reach the same level as the rest of Europe. We are growing faster than the European average. That is why I am convinced that we will achieve it."
To the journalist's remark that "Greece, in terms of purchasing power, ranks among the last in Europe, between Bulgaria and Latvia," Stournaras stressed that incomes are growing slowly. He also underlined that "We are no longer at the point where we were before the crisis. But the economy then was a bubble; it was not real. Wages have become more competitive, but we still have a lot to do to improve structural competitiveness. Look, for example, at public infrastructure, the justice system, the education system, and the fact that even people with high skills do not meet the needs of the labour market. Also, some sectors of the economy remain too closed to new entrants."