The European Central Bank's (ECB) governing council on Thursday lowered an emergency funding cap - the Emergency Liquidation Assistance (ELA) mechanism -- for Greek banks by 1.1 billion euros to 40.5 billion euros.
The lower ceiling comes after a request by the Bank of Greece (BoG), which again cited an improvement in systemic banks' liquidity and the positive flow of deposits held by private sector depositors.
A similar request and reasoning by the BoG last month resulted in a lowering of the ELA cap by two billion euros; 2.8 billion euros less if counting the entire period.
Greece's systemic banks have been dependent on the ELA since February 2015, when the ECB stopped direct access by the former to its "cheapest" forms of lending.
