Financial statements in GEMI: how well they show the Greek market

The financial statements published in GEMI, the Greek General Commercial Registry, cover 67.9% of the revenue that Eurostat measures for the Greek business economy, financial year 2023. In the number of businesses the two registries almost match, 917,188 against 932,549. By sector, coverage ranges from 5% in gambling to 98% in financial services, for three completely different reasons.

There is also a difference in time. The 2024 financial statements were 97.5% filed in GEMI by December 2025. Eurostat published the same year in August 2026.

Where the gap goes

A figure built from published financial statements departs from official statistics in three different ways. Each one affects different sectors and needs a different correction.

The middle column counts only capital companies, that is SA, limited liability company (EPE) and private company (IKE). They are the only ones obliged to publish, and the methodology below explains why.

The sixteen sectors of the table add up to €272.9 billion, which is 66.4%. The difference from the 67.9% of the total is 2,470 financial statements with €6.17 billion in revenue that have no declared main activity code (KAD, the Greek extension of NACE), or have a code outside sections B to R. They count in the national total, but not in any row.

First gap: not in the registry

In health, GEMI has 20,569 businesses where Eurostat counts 65,795. Three in ten. In professional activities, lawyers and engineers, five in ten.

The registrations simply do not exist: doctors and lawyers who practise as individuals do not register in GEMI. European statistics count them as businesses because they are built on the tax register. GEMI is a commercial registry and does not ask them to register.

The same happens, more mildly, in transport with 0.76: taxis and trucks run as sole proprietorships.

Second gap: registered, but keeping single-entry books

In construction, GEMI has more businesses than the statistics, 1.24, and only 33% of those obliged published financial statements. In energy, 1.60 in the registry and 24% publication, the lowest of all: every solar park is its own IKE, and most of them upload nothing.

Here the company exists in the registry with a seat, an activity and management. Only its financials are not published anywhere.

Third gap: we measure a different thing

In gambling, KAD 92, the published financial statements give €425.5 million from 210 companies. Eurostat gives €8,458 million for the same code and year, which is 5% coverage. Twenty times the difference, with correct numbers on both sides.

The sector statistics count the amounts wagered. The company books its net revenue, after the winnings paid back to players. Two different measures with the same name.

OPAP, the Greek lottery and betting company, does not explain the gap, as one might expect: the listed company is a holding company and sits in financial services, not in gambling.

The publication rate says nothing about coverage

This is the most useful finding for anyone who works with this data.

Health publishes the highest rate of all, 59% of those obliged, and captures only 52% of revenue. Financial services publish 38% and capture 98.3%.

The reason is simple once you see it. In financial services, the few that publish are the banks and the insurers, which in money terms are the whole sector. In health, thousands of individual doctors are missing. Each one counts for little, but together they count.

What matters is whether the few that publish are the large ones.

How stable the gap is

A stable gap can be corrected by scaling up. A gap that moves cannot.

The first two years are lower because older financial years have fewer documents available in the registry. The share of companies that published did not change. In the two mature years the ratio is practically the same.

By sector, coverage does not follow size. On logarithmic axes the fifteen sectors fall around a straight line with slope 1.00 and R² 0.97: a large sector is not systematically covered better or worse than a small one. But the factor changes from sector to sector, from ×1.02 in financial services to ×2.43 in energy. A single ratio works for the total, where the deviations of the sectors cancel out. A single sector needs its own ratio.

Arts and entertainment stay outside the line, because of the definition gap in gambling. With them included, the slope falls to 0.90 and R² to 0.88.

Scaling the 2023 ratio onto the 2024 sample gives an estimate of €440.2 billion, against €437.5 billion announced by Eurostat. A deviation of 0.6%.

These are two observations. They are not enough to say that the sample predicts the official figure. They are enough to show that the gap is stable, and that the publication law sets it.

The same financial year, eight months earlier

Official statistics are more complete. But they come with a delay measured in months.

The 2024 financial statements were filed in GEMI during 2025, with a deadline of 30 September. How much of the final revenue was already there, by date:

September alone brings 42,438 financial statements. It is the deadline month, and it shows in the data like a wall.

Eurostat published the Greek 2024 data on 31 August 2026. That is eight months after the date when the same financial year was 97.5% filed in GEMI, and eleven months after the deadline.

For someone who follows a sector or a competitor, this is the practical difference between the two sources: one is more complete, the other exists.

Methodology

Sources: the 2023 financial statements as published in GEMI, as read and analysed by bizlist, and Eurostat's sbs_ovw_act for Greece. Retrieved on 1 September 2026.

We chose 2023 because it is the latest mature year on both sides. The 2024 financial year is still receiving filings, so its sample is still growing.

Filters on revenue:

1. Financial year that closes within 2023, currency euro.
2. Branches of foreign companies are excluded. They report the worldwide revenue of their parent company. It is not a measure of Greek activity.
3. Consolidated statements of listed companies are excluded. Group revenue contains the subsidiaries, which already count separately. Without this filter the same revenue would count twice. The cost is that it leaves out PPC, the Greek Public Power Corporation, with €7.7 billion. This is why energy shows 41%.

Who is obliged to publish and who is not

The "publication rate" makes sense only with the right denominator. Capital companies are obliged to publish: SA, EPE, IKE. Sole proprietorships, general partnerships (OE) and limited partnerships (EE) are not.

Among insurance agents, of the 18,311 active registrations 13,602 are sole proprietorships. It is a licensed profession, so registration in GEMI is mandatory, but as natural persons they never publish financial statements. With all of them in the denominator, the sector shows "6.7% publication". With only those obliged, 38%.

What the comparison does not include

European statistics cover the business economy, that is sections B to S excluding public administration and households. It is not the whole economy and it does not compare with GDP.

Revenue is not a measure of the size of the economy: the total contains intra-group transactions, and a refinery moves huge amounts at a small margin.

The mapping of KAD to sector uses the first two digits. KAD numbering changed in 2026 and the database holds a mix of two generations of codes. At sector level the shift is small, but at four-digit code level it would not be.

Every number published here is recalculated from the same data in an automatic check that fails on any deviation.