Bloomberg on Wednesday quoted "officials involved in negotiations" over the increasingly gasping Greek bailout program as stressing that no substantial improvement is expected at a coming Eurogroup meeting over a debt relief measures for Greece.
Bloomberg on Wednesday quoted "officials involved in negotiations" over the increasingly gasping Greek bailout program as stressing that no substantial improvement is expected at a coming Eurogroup meeting over a debt relief measures for Greece.
The package on the table mainly refers to an extension of maturities for previous bailout loans, and dates from May 2016.
The report comes amid almost hourly statements by European and international officials this week over Greek debt relief, as the IMF and European creditors remain at odds over whether or not the country's debt load is sustainable. The issue affects the IMF's decision on whether to rejoin the bailout as a lender and is intricately linked with forecasts for the Greek economy, fiscal targets after the bailout, Greek bonds re-inclusion in ECB's QE stimulus program, and domestic political developments in Euro zone members - especially in the country at the center of the tempest, Greece, and the biggest lender, Germany.
In a bevy of comments the previous day on the debt relief/bailout conundrum, several of the protagonists were quoted as saying:
-- "Greece will only accept a solution that guarantees its exit into the markets (for the purpose of sovereign borrowing) immediately," was Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' comment at a general assembly of Greece's biggest employers' and industrialists' group (SEV). His reference to markets' approval, as a benchmark for successful Greek debt relief, comes roughly two and a half years after he pledged to supporters to make "markets dance a different tune" if he and leftist SYRIZA party assumed power in Greece.
-- Speaking at an Economist conference in Frankfurt on the Greek economy, Bank of Greece (BoG) Governor Yannis Stournaras again emphasized that markets must know if the Greek debt is sustainable.
-- Beyond the resurgent debate over debt relief ahead of the June 15 Eurogroup in Luxembourg, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem reminded that several "prior actions" must be implemented by the Greek side in order to conclude the second review. Without a conclusion of the review, a scheduled loan tranche worth up to 10 billion euros cannot be disbursed to Athens.
-- Finally, speaking from the same Frankfurt conference, the head of the European Commission delegation in the Greek program, Declan Costello, underlined that Greece's problem is not the fiscal issues, but one of lagging competitiveness, as he said.