By Th. Tsiros
The delay in achieving a first review of the Greek program (third bailout) over the first half of 2016 forced the Greek government to cover obligations of roughly four billion euros in the first quarter and 2.3 billion euros in the second quarter without a cent of financing from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
The pending disbursement of a 7.5-billion-euro tranche, part of a total 10.3-billion-euro bailout package for the first nine months of 2016, literally “saves the day” for the Greek state’s financing needs.
Athens has obligations totaling 5.1 billion euros for Q3, of which 3.7 billion are loan capital repayments and 1.4 billion are for interest payments.
With the loan tranche, the Greek state will reportedly meet its financing needs until September 2016, a period that is expected to coincide with the disbursement of the remaining 2.8 billion euros of the first 2016 bailout loan (10.3 bln euros).
Looking forward to 2017, the Greek state’s obligations total 9.9 billion euros, plus an added 5.4 billion euros for interest payments. A year later, in 2018, the figures are 3.9 and 4.7 billion euros, respectively.
Another loan tranche of 6.1 billion euros is scheduled to flow into Greek state coffers in November 2016, which is set to coincide with the conclusion of the second review of the current Greek bailout, with all sides expressing a hope that the process will go much smoother than the first review.
In the first quarter of 2017, Athens is set to receive another 1.5 billion euros, following the conclusion of the third review of the third Greek bailout. The second quarter of 2017 marks the period of a scheduled 9.6 billion-euro loan disbursement; another two billion euros are set for Q3 and 5.1 billion euros for Q4.
In total, Greece is set to receive 18.2 billion euros in loans by its institutional creditors in 2017, up from 16.4 billion in 2016. The figure for 2018 is 9.9 billion euros.
