The lack of sufficient technical and specialized labor force and the long delays in the programs of the development law are the two biggest problems for the industry-manufacturing sector in Thessaly, as the recently re-elected President of the Association of Industries of Thessaly & Central Greece, Georgios Roupakias, emphasized in an interview with “N”.
“You cannot talk about development policy when your development tools do not work,” Roupakias pointed out about the development law and added: “You cannot talk about development and an attractive environment when you have a development law, which takes about two years to give you results. We still have no results on the Agri-Food section and the 360-degree Entrepreneurship voted on in 2022 and the proposals submitted until March 2023. Whatever business plans discussed are outdated and I do not know if it is possible to implement them now as all costs have increased. No development law can help any business when its response is so slow. No one in the global economy is waiting for your business plan to be approved so that you can grow.”
“For me, the big challenge is to be able to help small and medium-sized businesses go beyond the strict boundaries of the family business. It’s a matter of mentality. We are not behind the Italians, the Spanish or the Germans in any way. In these countries, in addition to the large industries, there are many small ones that have a global reach and which started as family businesses but were able to operate more technocratically.”
