Greece's economy minister on Wednesday essentially downplayed the prospects of the domestic banking system rejoining the ECB's asset purchasing program - better known as Quantitative Easing (QE) - one of a handful of priorities repeatedly cited by the coalition government in Athens before last week's Eurogroup agreement.
Asked to gauge how important the European Central Bank's stimulus program was for would-be investors, Dimitri Papadimitriou said such a development is now more symbolic, instead of actually leading to more credit for the to the bailout-dependent country.
"The access to QE ... is more for a symbolic nature than actual credit extension. We're limited to how much credit we can get through the QE program. It would be nice to have it but it's a decision by an independent institution (ECB), it's not part of the (bailout) program, but I believe that based on the expression of interest that I have seen, that Greece will be able to access the market even without the QE," the long-time US-based academic told Bloomberg television.
He also expressed optimism, as he said, after the election of Emmanuel Macron as president of France.
