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The crisis has hit a heavy blow to small and medium-sized businesses in Greece due to which nearly 229,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have disappeared from the business map of the country over the course of seven years, from 2008 to 2014, and about 700,000 jobs have been lost. According to a study published in the latest monthly edition of the Centre of Planning and Economic Research, the reasons for this situation were related not only to the difficulties caused by the economic crisis and the limited access of SMEs to bank financing. The economic crisis had rather revealed the structural problems of SMEs in Greece, their high dependence on domestic demand and the insufficient investment in the production of goods and services for exports.

According to calculations by the European Commission, in 2014 the number of SMEs in Greece decreased by 26.6% compared to 2008, causing a 40.2% decline in added value (from 55 billion euro in 2008 to 32.8 billion euro in 2014) and a 29.3% decrease in employment. Medium-sized companies were more heavily hit as their number during the same period decreased by 35%, employment by 36.3% and added value by 41.5%. As stated in the study signed by Ersi Athanasiou, a researcher at the Centre of Planning and Economic Research, the crisis appears to have hampered the survival of medium-sized companies (with less than 250 employees) more than that of small ones (employing slightly less than 50 workers) because the larger scale means higher fixed operating costs, greater credit requirements and potentially less flexibility with regard to adapting to changing market conditions. Furthermore, despite the partial substitution of those companies that leave the market with new ones, this process is much more difficult for medium-sized enterprises than for small or very small ones, since the establishment of medium-sized companies requires more capital and a  more favourable economic climate in general.

SMEs operating in the fields of construction and wholesale and retail reported the largest losses. In particular, the construction sector reported the loss of 82,000 companies, 215,000 jobs and 2.5 billion euro in added value in the particular period whereas the commercial sector lost 61,000 companies, 206,000 jobs and 9.6 billion euro in added value.

These data reveal the serious imbalances in the development pattern of the Greek economy, the overconsumption and the accompanying overleveraging in the public and private sector, the overinvestment in housing, and a production that is oriented more towards satisfying domestic needs than towards striving to acquire shares in international markets.