Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 17-01-05

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PM Tsipras and President Pavlopoulos to discuss Cyprus issue on Tuesday

[02] FM Kotzias meets British State Minister Duncan

[03] Tourism is a national champion of the Greek economy, ISETE report

[01] PM Tsipras and President Pavlopoulos to discuss Cyprus issue on Tuesday

The meeting will take place at 13.00, at the Presidential mansion.

[02] FM Kotzias meets British State Minister Duncan

The main topic of the discussion, which lasted half an hour, was the issue of the safeguards in view of the multilateral Geneva Conference on 12 January. No statements were made after the end of the meeting.

Before his meeting with Duncan, Kotzias had a phone contact with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu during which the two leaders decided to meet in New York on Friday morning.

[03] Tourism is a national champion of the Greek economy, ISETE report

According to the Labour Force Survey findings, at peak periods, tourism employs more than 10% of the country's labour force and has become the 3rd largest employment sector (after commerce and the entire primary sector), ahead of manufacturing and the public sector.

The apparent downturn in revenues for 2016, after 3 years of exponential increase (+41% between 2012 and 2015 in fixed prices), is due to the international trend associated with a decrease in the average per capita expenditure. It is also due to the fact that because of the prolonged uncertainty in the first half of 2016, the Greek tourism product was late in entering the international tourism market, leading to large last-minute offers to attract customers.

The demand for international air travel to Greece remains quite high, while there is also a comeback of traditional markets, especially the Germanspeaking ones. Meanwhile, road tourism has recovered significantly over the last few months and a positive change is expected in arrivals for 2016.

However, the extremely high taxes on the Greek tourism product, primarily an export product, are a significant inhibiting factor in this effort, excessively burdening competitiveness, business incentives and the disposable income of employees, while at the same time exacerbating seasonality.

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