ATHENS: Greece is on track to produce a primary surplus from 2023, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday, saying the country’s economy had shown resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with Reuters, Mitsotakis also said the country would likely exceed its forecast earnings from tourism this year, and expressed hope the country could return to investment grade ‘sooner rather than later’.

“I feel comfortable that our public finances are fully sustainable,” said Mitsotakis, whose New Democracy conservatives came to power in July 2019. Greece, which saw a quarter of its national output sapped by almost a decade of financial turmoil starting in 2010, had emerged from recession in 2017.

But the pandemic took its toll on the country’s economy in 2020, when lockdowns and a downturn in tourism - a key money maker - sent the economy into a tailspin, shaving 8.2% from output and tipping public finances into a deficit.

Just 7 million people visited the country last year, bringing in revenues of 4 billion euros ($4.69 billion) compared with a record 33 million tourists and revenues of 18 billion euros in 2019.

Now, Mitsotakis said, Greece appeared to be on course to exceed 50 percent of 2019 visitor revenues, a factor which prompted an upwards revision of 2021 growth targets last week.

“Obviously we’ll do the math at the end of the tourism season. But the first indications that we have is that we will be able to exceed the target that we have set in the budget.