ATHENS: Around 60 percent of businesses’ requests to send money abroad are being approved by the Banking Transactions Approval Committee and the banks themselves. From July 29 to August 18, international transactions worth 2.97 billion euros were approved, against 5 billion euros across a similar timeframe before capital controls were introduced.
As highlighted by Greece’s banks, in the third week of capital controls the situation improved as such transactions reached the cumulative value of approved transactions for the first two weeks of capital controls.
A total of 10,331 requests were made, of which 8,509 were approved, 332 rejected, 373 withdrawn and 579 required additional processing. Of the applications approved, 1,293 were for amounts of less than 100,000 euros and 1,195 were for amounts of less than 150,000 euros.
The Greek International Business Association says Greece’s average monthly needs for imported products over the past six months came to 3.9 billion euros. July, September and October are the months with the highest value of imports, on average reaching 4.5 billion each month.
