Greece’s leftwing prime minister Alexis Tsipras has lambasted international creditors supporting the thrice bailed-out country for exacerbating its problems by failing to agree on how to address its burgeoning debt problem.



Speaking at the Thessaloniki annual trade fair, where Greek leaders traditionally outline economic policy, Tsipras blamed a spat between the EU and the International Monetary Fund for putting off badly needed private investors.

“I would say that what is creating conditions of delay in regaining trust of markets and investors is the constant clash and disagreements between the IMF and European institutions,” he told reporters in a traditional no-holds-barred exchange.

The dispute has also held up the nation’s participation in the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme, which is vital to the restoration of confidence and a faster return to growth. “A country which has made such harsh adjustment cannot wait much more,” he said of the six years of gruelling austerity enforced as the price of rescue from bankruptcy. “It is entitled to fair regulation of the debt issue.”

Saving his biggest criticism for Germany – the largest provider of more than €300bn (£254bn) in emergency funds Greece has received since May 2010 – Tsipras said resolving Athens’ unmanageable debt pile was not a bilateral issue but was of international consequence. Germany, which is holding national elections next year, has ruled out addressing the issue in the near future.

Tsipras said: “The problem has an international dimension because a solution to this problem will play a decisive role in the development of the European economy which, in turn, determines the international economy.” At €380bn, the equivalent of 180% of GDP, Greece has the highest debt load in the 19-bloc eurozone.

The IMF, citing deep-seated concerns over the country’s debt sustainability, has still not decided whether it should participate in the third bailout Athens signed up to after months of tortuous negotiations in mid-2015.

In a keynote address before entrepreneurs on Saturday, Tsipras said there was finally “light at the end of the tunnel” to end Greece’s downturn, the likes of which no advanced western economy has known in modern times.

Greek national output has been slashed by almost a third and unemployment, at more than 26%, remains the highest in Europe. “We are passing from the nadir of a seven-year recession to positive signs of growth,” he said, predicting the economy would grow by 2.7% in 2017.

In an unexpected departure from his Syriza party’s ideological antipathy to private enterprise, the leftist leader appealed to international and domestic businessmen to invest “without hesitation” in the Greek economy, insisting: “It will be mutually beneficial both for you and our country.”

Under his stewardship, his Syriza-led coalition had a five-year plan to create a “new Greece” – reinvigorated and free of corruption and vested interests – by the time it marked its 200th anniversary as a modern state in 2021.

Trade unionists protest in Thessaloniki. Photograph: Sotiris Barbarousis/EPA

Throughout Greece’s financial ordeal, prime ministers have used the Thessaloniki trade fair – the biggest in the Balkan peninsula - to make promises that few can ever keep.

In this, Tsipras was no different. Despite the country’s financial straitjacket – and threats by creditors that aid will dry up without further reforms - he pledged that Greeks would see instant relief in the form of funds extracted from a recent auction of private television licences.

The government, he said, would begin using the €246m it had gained from the sale towards strengthening the battered welfare state by providing free meals at schools, employing an extra 10,000 doctors and securing supplementary kindergarden classes for those hardest hit by the crisis.

But as Tsipras spoke, thousands of people demonstrated outside the exhibition halls against a government widely perceived to have betrayed its original rallying cry to overturn austerity, with trade unionists forecasting that this winter may be the worst yet.