"Reducing one's debt means more freedom for the country, more economic opportunities for the country," National Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said, among others, following his visit to the Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA) on Wednesday morning. The minister, accompanied by Deputy Minister Thanos Petralias and the Secretary General of Fiscal Policy Pavlina Karasiotou, met with the PDMA General Director Dimitris Tsakonas and the agency's executives and discussed, among other things, the course of Greece's public debt.
After the meeting, Pierrakakis made the following statement:
""The debt that undermined our national sovereignty and social cohesion is now rapidly diminishing. This is an achievement of a whole generation. With the full repayment of the loans of the International Monetary Fund, with the early repayment of the first expensive memorandum, with these types of actions, we are now defusing, we are minimising a danger that existed. And what was that? That from 2032 onwards, the country be hard-pressed to repay the debt due to increased servicing costs.
 This risk no longer exists. And we, as a government, are in a position to claim that we will not do what happened in the past. What? Pass the cost, pass the bill down the line, pass it on to the next generation.
   The country, at the moment, as I mentioned, is scaling down its debt and in 2029 it will not be the most indebted country in Europe. And this is a conquest of the Greek people as a whole, after many years of difficulties. And it is a conquest on which we must and can build. 
   Reducing one's debt means more freedom for the country, it means more economic opportunities for the country. It means having fewer burdens for the future and being able to develop better. It means having more confidence in the eyes of the markets. This is a very important achievement and many congratulations are due to the PDMA, its executives, its General Director Dimitris Tsakonas."