Greek lawmakers approved on Tuesday the country’s first post-bailout budget which projects a high primary surplus next year and sees a pick-up in economic growth.
The budget forecasts the economy to grow by 2.5 percent in 2019, compared to a projected 2.1 percent this year.
After emerging in August from an international bailout, the country’s third since 2010, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said the governing coalition’s lawmakers had gone through an “odyssey” during the last three-and-a-half years of the bailout era, but could now vote for “the first budget of a Greece that is free again,”.
As lawmakers debated the budget inside the assembly, with main opposition party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis dubbing the ruling coalition a “government of lies,” thousands of protesters marched through central Athens and outside parliament to demonstrate against unpopular reforms and austerity.
