Γιώργος Προκοπίου: Tο θέμα είναι περισσότερο ιδεολογικό παρά πρακτικό

Ο Γιώργος Προκοπίου ιδρυτής της Dynacom Tankers Management, στην ομιλία του εχθές, στο συνεδριο του economist, τόνισε πως στην ελλάδα όσοι νόμοι και αν περάσουν προς την διευκόλυνση των επενδύσεων και την ανάπτυξη δεν θα έχουν τα ανάλογα αποτελέσματα, γιατί το θέμα είναι περισσότερο ιδεολογικό παρά πρακτικό.

Το περιβάλλον προς την επιχειρηματικότητα δεν είναι φιλικό, ενώ θα πρέπει να μειωθεί η γραφειοκρατία, επεσήμανε.

Όσον αφορά την ναυτιλία των ελλήνων η οποία είναι πρώτη στον κόσμο απασχολώντας περί τα 350.000 με 400.000 άτοαμα, σύμφωνα με ερεύνα ρου ΙΟΒΕ, είπε πως θα πρέπει να δούμε τι κάνει το κράτος για την ναυτιλία και τι η ναυτιλία για το κράτος, συγκρίνοντας το και με άλλα κράτη.

Τόνισε επίσης, πως στόχος θα πρέπει να είναι η εξέλιξη του Πειραιά σε ένα πραγματικά παγκόσμιο ναυτιλιακό κέντρο το οποίο θα προσελκύει ναυτιλιακές εταίρες απ όλο τον κόσμο να εγκατασταθούν και να λειτουργούν από εδώ και τότε φυσικά και εμείς θα παραμείνουμε εδώ.

ακολουθεί η ομιλία του κου. Προκοπίου

George Procopiou, Founder, Dynacom Tankers Management

During our civil war (1946-1949) even though the armed battle was won by the right-wing, now known as the conservatives, the ideological battle was won by the communists. We have the oxymoron that the business people struggling for progress, development, and the implementation of new ideas for growth are called “conservatives”, instead the ones that are stuck with the ideology of statism, are referring to themselves as the forces of progress.

The benevolent and hard working Greek population should not be held responsible for the situation. Instead, the workless, populist, “brain-selling”, demagogues who are guiding, or rather misguiding, the population are the ones to blame.

The initial handling of the crisis was another disaster which can be attributed to the fact that both parties receiving and providing help were experimenting.

Around 3000 years ago, our Greek ancestors established in Delos, a tax-free international center of commerce, religion, and culture, showing us the way to prosperity. Delos was founded on the principles of openness, the acceptance of the diverse/the unknown, and the encouragement of consumption and trade. The same principles are seen in the excavations of a Minoan Bronze Age settlement, Akrotiri in Santorini. Three-story villas with in-house bathtubs, sewage installations, andfrescoes depicting the trade between Greece and Egypt, reflect the high level of economic activity and elevated standard of living about 3500 years ago. The recipe is the same. Outward oriented growth, with ships playing the pivotal role. Exports, trade, transportation, openness.

Even today, after two and a half years of massive reforms and efforts to reshape the business environment the results are still not the desired ones. Our issues are mainly ideological and not structural. Regardless of how many laws encouraging business activity and investment are established, positive results are hindered by the lack of business friendly attitudes. To materialize our country’s benefits from these progressive laws, business friendly attitudes from all levels of the bureaucracy must prevail.

We have to understand that the businessman is every state’s client. His success generates reduction of unemployment, increase in VAT receipts, capability of the state to collect taxes and consequently the balance of the state budget. Unfortunately, in many quarters of the state mechanism this is not understood and business people are perceived as the enemy.

The situation is effectively portrayed by the following joke about Karagiozis. In the entrance of his theatre Karagiozis had placed a sign with the phrase “Free Entrance” whilst simultaneously he was found in the exit holding a long stick below a sign with the phrase “Exit: 5 drachmas”.

We are grateful for the support that is being extended to us by the European Union and the IMF to alleviate the impending cash flow dead-end. In shipping we repair the ship whilst it is steaming; we do not stop the ship completely to effect the repairs and restart it. With this approach, hundreds of thousands of businesses vanished and over a million of the private sector employees lost their jobs. In addition, apart from the social volcano that has been created, the collection of direct and indirect taxes, as well as the contributions to the social security schemes, plummeted. We are in need of growth. We need the pie to become bigger, and we want the participation of all.

The international competition, and especially the one in our region, is fierce. Money is like the birds. You put water and seeds to attract them. The moment they hear * clap *they spread wings and fly away, legally.

In this ideological confusion the best that could happen was the election of Mr. Antonis Samaras, originating from a noble family, with lots of experience and who had been left out of the political arenafor almost 15 years. He has always had the courage to present things as they are, even in situations in which others believe that there is a political cost for being direct, and take actions to ameliorate our country’s situation disregarding the possible compromising effects to his popularity. He has dedicated all his energy in an attempt to change all the backward oriented attitudes and 30 years of mismanagement.

Greece is a blessed country that has unique competitive advantages in various sectors, the obvious one being tourism. It is undeniably the ideal place to spend your holidays and retirement in.

The uniqueness of our archipelago makes it self understood that if taken into advantage correctly it has the potential to become the number one yachting center. Our minister of Shipping and the Aegean, Mr. Varvitsiotis has recently passed the most growth-oriented law to date, in an attempt to reverse the bureaucratic era with the most growth promoting and yacht friendly one.

A single yacht that needs 2 days to come from France or Italy for a weeklong visit, generates cash-flow equal to the one arising from a small hotel for a full season. It is not only the yachting industry in itself that gains from this activity but a chain of associated skills and businesses. This includes taxes (three quarters of the fuel costs are taxes), boat builders, marinas, crew-members, repairers, gift shops, restaurants, suppliers, manufacturers of equipment, and hundreds of others.

We are 6 years after the collapse of Lehman brothers, which was the first time that the banks inflicted their problems to their clients. In a booming shipping market, the banking system failed. Literally, from one day to the other, letters of credit were not honored, and the cargoes remained on the docks. The trust between the banks evaporated. All experts and forecasters were advising and foreseeing that the ship building capacity was not enough to cope with the immense prospective demand. This rosy reality changed within a couple of weeks when the ship rates from 200,000 dollars a day, dived to zero. This is the type of business that shipping is.

Over the last 4,000 years Greece’s main strong point is shipping. We do not need a lot to explain that Greeks are doing well in shipping. The fact that the Greek owned fleet is the biggest in the world speaks for itself. This gives Europe a tremendous strategic advantage and great financial strength. But, lately we have seen the bureaucrats in Brussels wanting a bigger say in shipping policies outside the IMO. My advice to them is the common saying “If it works, don’t fix it”.

Globalization is implemented with ships. It wouldn’t be possible to talk about globalization if we didn’t have the power to ignore the origin of any product and the only matter to be concerned about is unit price and quality.

As transportation costs are so low and competitive that become negligible to the unit cost. It is cheaper to bring here a ton of coal, or iron ore, or grain from Brazil than from Piraeus. The Greek fleet is the youngest and the largest and they provide outstanding quality of service. You could argue, “What is the benefit for Greece?”. First of all we will see what the state is doing for shipping and then what shipping is doing for the state, as well as what is the situation in other countries, taking as well into consideration that the shipping management activity can be performed from any place that you can have a working mobile phone. We do not have subsidies for building ships, no guarantees, no cargo preferences, no exports from Greece, no imports to transport to Greece, no interest subsidies. We are practically, alone. The shipping industry operating out of Greece is comprised of around 900 shipping offices that directly or indirectly provide employment and activity to 350 to 400 thousand well-paid people (families) as per the latest study of IOVE.

We need the shipowner to remain in Greece. As shipowners are investing in tourism, hotels, banking, energy related activities, real estate, construction, and development. Furthermore ships; irrespective of their flag, whether they are making profits or losses, and without taking into account amortization, are taxed by their tonnage. If we see what other countries are doing, for example Germany, they were subsidizing the construction and furthermore, they are giving huge tax incentives with the KG system which not only distorted the market by building unwanted ships where their goal was to have losses to be offset with any type of income of other activity of the shareholder/investor, by being able to offset the losses of the ship. They could amortize a newbuilding to 0 within the first 7 years of its life, and if sold later on, the difference was exempted.

Today, we have a new phenomenon: hedge-funds without having any knowledge regarding shipping and which possess immense liquidity, investing heavily on already overbuilt sectors, distorting the market further. The only recipe for success is knowing the subject in depth, having the capacity to offer high quality services, and being consistent and persistent without having a given time horizon for exit. As these funds have a specific time frame to realize their profits or losses, I foresee a great congestion in the exit.

My vision is for Piraeus to become the center of international shipping. Meaning that the legal framework to be such that the German, Norwegian, Russian shipowners, and others, to bring their offices to Piraeus as they are currently doing in Cyprus or Singapore. Be sure then, that if foreigners are coming, Greeks will not leave. Piraeus has the fertile ground for producing new, young shipowners at every cycle. It is a phenomenon that we have to protect and encourage to keep the shipping cluster alive.

We are in need of a general change in mentality and this is one of the most difficult things to accomplish. In Ancient Greece the process of ostracism was practiced. On the occasion they voting for the ostracism of Aristides, an illiterate person went up to him without knowing who he is and asked him to write the name “Aristides” on his voting shard (όστρακο). Aristides, wrote his name on it, but asked the stranger “Do you know him? Has he wronged you?”. The stranger replied “No, I don’t know him, but it irritates me to hear everyone call him Aristides the Just all the time.”

The mere fact that the exclamation of admiration in Greece is “βρε τον πούστη” shows the immense need for resetting our ideals and role models. We are in need of enlightened leaders, like Mr. Samaras, with new ideas and a government that thinks out of the box who will lead our country to success. A successful country is one that:

1. Possesses political stability

2. Provides security

3. Ensures privacy and confidentiality

4. Is at your disposal (regarding business)

5. Learns from you

6. Caters to your needs

7. Has good weather (we already have plenty of this)

8. Possesses high standards of education and healthcare

9. Has a business friendly regime

10. Has Checks and balances

11. Has reasonable taxation

12. Possess VAT rates that encourage consumption

13. Has laws that to provide certainty, clarity, consistency

14. When something works donot to “fix it”

15. Listens to you

This is something doable; only if we all believe in it and actively participate towards its implementation.

Thank you very much.