In Greek crisis, lessons in a shrimp farm's travails

Just over a decade ago, Napoleon Tsanis set out from Sydney with 11 million euros and a dream to build a shrimp farm in his ancestral homeland.
What he got was years of wrestling Greek bureaucracy and a court battle with a civil servant. Tsanis eventually opened his shrimp farm, but even now the Greek-Australian has managed to invest just 2 million euros ($2.5 million), and that thanks to sheer stubbornness and a strong Australian dollar that has kept his venture profitable despite the delays.
Ask him for the root cause of Greece's crisis and his answer is simple: the enormous regulatory burden that he says crushes the country's economy.
Foreign investors have long been put off by Greece's bureaucracy and lack of clear laws. The World Bank ranks Greece only the 100th-easiest country in the world in which to do business, up one notch on last year but below places such as Albania and Lebanon. Registering property and protecting investors are particularly weak areas, it says. Corruption is another problem. Greece ranked 80th on Transparency International's 2011 corruption perceptions index, down two spots from 2010 and behind emerging economies such as Ghana and Tunisia.
If Greece has any chance of fixing its debt crisis - one which threatens the euro and has roiled global markets - the country will need to grow. One way to encourage growth, say businessmen like Tsanis, would be to rethink the state's attitude to business.
"There is mistrust in entrepreneurship; bureaucracy treats anyone trying to start a business as if they are guilty of something," said Angelos Tsakanikas, research director at the IOBE think tank in Athens.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/24/us-greece-works-idUSBRE86N0BH20120724