5大改革有望重塑希腊经济

度假物业的开发

    对于喜欢希腊的人们来说，有件事很奇怪，为什么希腊岛屿的宁静生活不像西班牙或葡萄牙那样吸引退休老人。照理说，希腊应成为欧洲的佛罗里达。根源还是在于希腊僵化的法律，因为它抑制了市场。希腊城市以外的地区没有分区规划法律。但这并不意味着可以在岛上或农村地区随意盖房。正相反，开发受到严格地限制。只有一部涉及总体规划开发的法律，规定别墅和住所必须建在大型酒店的周围。

    这部法律同时还禁止开发商出售住所及别墅，只允许租赁。另外，法律事实上紧致高尔夫球场这类开发。希腊全国只有6个高尔夫球场，简单难以相信。

    一项新的法律做出了两点改进。第一，要求提供的环境影响报告从2项减少至1项，基本上将审批时间缩短了一半，从两年降至一年出头。第二，允许开发商将度假物业中的大量公寓和住房用于出售，不再是只能租赁。仅这一项变化就会让希腊成为退休者的首选目的地。

    但单这项法律可能还远远不够。开发商正在推动进行更多的改革。国际豪华度假村开发商Dolphin Capital在希腊拥有多个项目，其管理合伙人弥尔图斯•坎博莱兹称：“应该修改法律，允许高尔夫球场、游艇船坞等项目的开发与酒店建设脱钩，”如果继续打破行业坚冰，整个市场将释放出巨大的潜力。

劳动力市场

    本月通过的劳动方案是所有改革措施中最重要的一项。过去抑制希腊竞争力的最严重因素正是多级的工资设定体系。直到最近，希腊政府和工会还商定了新的年度“最低工资”，规定最低工资必须上调5%。

    事实上，这不只是适用于拿最低工资的劳动者，也是所有行业员工（不论工资高低）的工资涨幅下限。然后，第二轮谈判按行业展开，而5%的全国性协议是涨幅的下限。因此，百货行业的员工可能会在这个基础上再获2%的加薪。然后，才是每家公司与工会谈判。这些公司层面的协议往往还会再加上几个点的涨幅。因此，在经济不错的2000-20008年，每年的工资涨幅很容易就会达到9-10%。

    这个三级体系确保了劳动者的工资涨幅高于通胀率，也导致希腊商品价格年复一年地超过了控制工资涨幅的德国所生产的同类商品。如果有一个因素要对欧元区的灾难负责，那就是僵化的工资政策，不仅是希腊，也包括与其高度类似的意大利、西班牙和葡萄牙。

Resort development

    To lovers of Greece, it's a mystery why this island idyll isn't a retirement destination on the scale of Spain or Portugal. By rights, Greece should be the Florida of Europe. Once again, it's rigid laws that suffocate the market. In Greece, areas outside of cities do not have zoning laws. That doesn't mean you can build freely on islands or in rural areas. On the contrary, development is severely restricted. Only a single law allows for master plan development, and it requires that the villas and homes be constructed around a major hotel.

    The law also prevents the developer from selling homes or villas; only rentals are allowed. For example, golf course developments are effectively barred. Incredibly, the entire country offers only a half-a-dozen courses.

    A new law provides two improvements. First, it reduces the requirement of two environmental impact statements to just one, virtually cutting the approval time in half, from two years to a bit over twelve months. Second, it now allows developers to sell many of the apartments and homes in their resorts, instead of merely renting them out. That change alone could make Greece a prime destination for retirees.

    But the measure still doesn't go far enough. Developers are pushing for more reforms. "The laws should change to allow development around golf courses and marinas without necessarily building more hotels," says Miltos Kambourides, managing partner of Dolphin Capital, an international luxury resort developer with several projects in Greece. If the thaw continues, it will stir an industry with giant potential.

The labor market

    The labor measures enacted this month are the most important reforms of all. In the past, nothing hampered Greece's competitiveness more severely than its multi-tiered system for setting wages. Until recently, the government and the unions negotiated a new "minimum wage" annually, mandating that the lowest-paid employees get a raise of, say, 5%.

    In practice, the deal didn't apply to just the bottom level. It set a floor on wages for workers in all industries, up and down the pay scale. Then, a second round of negotiations would occur for each industry, with the 5% national agreement as a minimum raise. So the department store employees might get an extra 2%. Only then would the individual companies engage their unions. Those company-wide agreements would add another couple of points. So raises in the prosperous 2000 to 2008 years could easily come to 9% or 10% annually.

    The three-level system guaranteed that pay rose faster than inflation. That caused Greek goods to become more overpriced, year after year, than competing products from Germany, which held wages in check. If one factor is responsible for the disaster in the eurozone, it's the rigid wage policies not just in Greece, but the extremely similar systems in Italy, Spain and Portugal.