ATHENS: The Greek economy may be basking in the glow of a record summer tourism season, but it is just one bright spot in a fragile recovery overshadowed by weak exports, economists say.
After six years of recession, Greece got an economic boost from the May through September tourist season, welcoming more than 20 million visitors. The Greek statistics agency said the economy grew by 0.7 percent in the third quarter.
"Tourism did the best it could to lift the Greek economy but it can't do it all," said economist Panagoitis Petrakis at Athens University.
"It was a mistake to think during the planning of the international aid (for Greece) that the recovery would come from exports," Petrakis added.
Unlike other debt-hit eurozone countries rescued by international bailouts, Greece's exports have "only marginally recovered" from the low of 2008/09, the European Commission said in a June report.
"There's a big difference between Greece and the other countries that went through restructuring programmes, such as Ireland and Portugal, or received aid for its banks like Spain," said German researcher Jens Bastian, an expert on the Greek economy.
Ireland, Portugal and Spain saw their exports recover by 2013, even surpassing the level they were at before the 2008 financial crisis, the Commission report showed.
In the same period Greek exports recovered very slowly and failed to regain their 2008 level. Exports declined 0.2 percent between 2012 and 2013 (minus 2.0 percent without fuel and oil products) and minus 7.2 percent in the 12 months between October 2013 and September 2014.
The Greek government has insisted that only by boosting exports can the country pull out of the crisis, which has seen gross domestic product (GDP) shrink by 25 percent since 2008.
It argues that domestic demand cannot be expected to drive the recovery since demand has been severely crippled by austerity policies.
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