This was preceded however by a tightening in financial conditions in 2007 and 2008 on the back of investor panic and contagion effects that spilled over across the entire array of asset prices at the height of the crisis.
The adverse cyclical developments of the past eighteen months, and the dismal performance of the economy in the short term, encouraged the critics of GEAR to condemn it as a failure. There are therefore strong pressures within the country for Government to relinquish the strategy and to replace it with a more populist approach.