PM Mitsotakis: ‘We take particular care of Greece’s most isolated regions’

The financial incentives provided months ago to Greeks who wish to relocate to northern Evros is a pilot program for all rural regions Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an interview to the newspaper ‘Ta Choriatika’ in Proti, near Serres, on Saturday.

“Our job is to take care of problems of all Greek citizens and take particular care of the most isolated regions of our homeland,” Mitsotakis told journalist Fotini Gallou.

The prime minister also reiterated the further strengthening of the primary sector and of small-scale tourism as issues in rural Greece. Speaking of renewable energy sources, he said that their use will reduce energy prices, but “the first ones to benefit should be the municipalities that welcome them.”

Mitsotakis and Gallou spoke of how younger people could be encouraged to relocate to villages, and of what the benefits would be. One of the benefits, he said, was that smaller schools allowed more time between a teacher and a student, thsu improving the standard of education, adding also the help of digital education. “A child that may live in a remote village could have the same technological foundation as a child living in Athens or Thessaloniki. Technology is a bridge that breaks up isolation, and that is why I believe that gradually but steadily there will be more people who will be able to work from a distance and to think of the alternative of the village,” the PM said.

Responding to the question of young people founding innovative businesses in villages, and how they would be taxed, Mitsotakis said that the government had changed the lower tax rates to include people who live in villages with up to 1,500 residents (from 500).

“It is for this reason, let’s say, we are prioritizing the plans to support young farmers. I have instructed the Ministry of Agricultural Development to see to it that we can include as many young farmers as possible, because the farmers in regional Greece support the villages. We must have a realistic sense of what the economic activities are that are linked to the villages, and surely the primary sector plays a very important role,” he noted.

Πηγή: pagenews.gr