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Farmers and Sailors

Communications between most regions are poor because of distance and mountains. The sea unifies the country, and more than 89 per cent of imports and exports are carried by water. On land, the coastal roads are the main means of communication between the principal towns and the countryside. Greece was, in 1869, one of the last European countries to start building railways.

The IONIAN SEA in the west and the Aegean in the east contain 2000 Greek islands. Fewer than 200 are inhabited, but they contain 11.3 per cent of the population. The main tourist islands, such as CORFU. Crete, MIKONOS and RHODES, have international airports, while many others handle domestic flights only, The rest of the islands use PIRAFUS, the port of ATHENS. as their link with the outside world.

As the southernmost part of the BALKANS, the Greek peninsula is the most south-easterly extension of Europe cut off by its Communist neighbors from West European countries, 1300 km (800 miles) away by road, Again, sea and air provide important links; Italy is less than 200 km (125 miles) away by sea,

Greek poverty sank to a modern nadir in about 1950, when most families were still farming small patches of poor-quality land. Industry consisted of small processing plants for tobacco, leather, cotton and foodstuffs, There was little money to develop natural resources. Over the next 25 years a development program was pushed through, financed largely from Western Europe and the USA. Large irrigation schemes helped agriculture, and new power stations laid the foundations for industries such as shipbuilding, aluminium, steel, plastics, chemicals and electrical engineering.

But oil price rises and the world recession of the mid-1970s slowed development. Far too much manufacturing work is still carried out manually, and technology lags behind many other countries, So Greece remains relatively poor, with an income per head about half that of most of its partners in the EEC. Membership of the NATO military alliance increases the economic burdens of a poor country; the purchase of sophisticated armaments takes 8 per cent of the gross national product.

While tourism brings a steady income, the economy needs foreign exchange from other sources. Communist countries have been some of the biggest customers for Greece's agricultural products and the ship repair yards in SIROS, in exchange for electricity. telecommunications equipment and oil.

The merchant shipping business has enjoyed mixed fortunes in the last 40 years, hut with a seafaring tradition stretching back to the mythical Odysseus. Greece today has the second largest merchant fleet after Liberia, with one-ninth of the world's tonnage. There are some very rich Greek ship owners, but many ships are owned by foreigners, using Greece as a tax haven and taking their profits out of the country.

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