A government spokesman on Wednesday said Athens believes it can complete negotiations to conclude the ongoing bailout program on June 21, the date of a regularly scheduled Eurogroup meeting.
Nevertheless, spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos added that if certain "details" remain unresolved, then another Eurogroup meeting in the middle of summer shouldn't be ruled out. An official date for the ongoing and third consecutive bailout to end is August 20, 2018.
He spoke during a regular press briefing in the Greek capital.
At the same time he repeated that the Tsipras government position that a "clean exit" from the memorandum era means an exit without new commitments or "memorandum policy", i.e. austerity measures.
He also reiterated the leftist-rightist coalition government's absolute opposition to the idea of a precautionary credit line to be extended to Greece in the post-bailout period, saying such a prospect would, indeed, mean a "new memorandum".
Finally, he said an over-performance, by the Greek state, in posting a primary budget surplus for 2017 "gives us a very strong argument in our discussions with the IMF."
Greece's independent statistics authority on Monday announced that the primary budget surplus posted by the general government in 2017 reached a noteworthy 4 percent of GDP, over-exceeding the target and following a similar performance of 0.6 percent of GDP for 2016.
The authority, EL.STAT, said the figure was derived using the ESA 2010 methodology, with the surplus, in absolute terms, reaching 7.08 billion euros in 2017
