Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras kisses a cross during the opening ceremony of the International Trade Fair in Thessaloniki in northern Greece yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Greece’s economic pain will ease in 2014 as it exits a recession that will be less acute than forecast this year, helping the country meet its bailout targets, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said yesterday.

The country is struggling through a six-year slump that has shrunk its economy by more than a quarter, left more than one in four of the workforce jobless, pushed up poverty levels and shuttered thousands of businesses.

The EU and IMF, which have bailed the country out with two multi-billion-euro rescue packages, project gross domestic product will shrink 4.2 per cent this year after contracting 6.4 per cent in 2012.

But Samaras, addressing an annual trade fair in Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki, said the 2013 slump would be “smaller than forecast”. He promised Greeks worn down by the country’s worst post-war crisis a return to growth next year.

In a speech branded “delirious” by the leftist opposition Syriza party ahead of planned anti-austerity rallies in the city, Samaras said: “This year was the hardest, the most crucial, and it turned out to be the most successful.

This year was the hardest, the most crucial

“It was the hardest... because Greece paid for all the sins of the past”.

In a sign the country’s long slump may indeed be bottoming out, data this week showed the economy shrank 3.8 percent in the second quarter, helped by a rebound in tourism. That was the narrowest annual decline in nearly three years.

Greece’s lenders expect a return to anaemic growth of 0.6 percent in 2014 for an economy that has slumped 23 per cent since 2008, while austerity measures have crippled private consumption and unemployment risen to 27 per cent.

The lenders expect that rate to edge down to 26 per cent next year, and economic growth to pick up faster after 2015.

Samaras said Athens would beat this year’s main fiscal target of achieving a surplus on its primary budget, which excludes debt financing, allowing it to seek further debt relief from its eurozone partners.

“Greece is sticking to its promises and attaining its goals. The only thing needed is for our lenders to also keep their promises,” he said.

Excluded from financial markets since 2010, Greece has been kept afloat solely with €240 billion in loans and, under the current programme, will be financed until the second half of 2014. The IMF and Greece estimate that Athens will need an extra €10-11 billion in 2014-2015.

The eurozone is likely to agree to further financing in November, after the “troika” of EU, ECB and IMF inspectors, due in Athens on September 22, finish an assessment of its efforts to carry out painful reforms.

The reforms include selling off state assets and a deeply divisive plan for a transfer and layoff scheme for 25,000 public workers – mainly teachers and municipal police – that has triggered marches, rallies and strikes in protest.