Portugal’s Finance Minister Maria Luís Albuquerque walks past European Stability Mechanism Managing Director Klaus Regling during a EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels.
BRUSSELS: Greece’s international creditors will resume talks with Athens this week to review progress on the economic reforms it must make to get debt aid funding, eurozone finance ministers agreed.
“The Troika intends to return to Athens later this week,” Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after chairing a meeting of the 18-nation Eurogroup. “We welcome Athens’ commitment to reforms in a number of key areas ...(Greece) must now work with the Troika so that the review mission can be successfully concluded,” Dijsselbloem said.
The so-called ‘Troika’ of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund first bailed out Greece in 2010 with a programme worth ¤110bn ($151bn).
When that failed to stabilise the country, they agreed a much tougher second rescue in 2012 worth ¤130bn, plus a private sector debt write-off of more than ¤100bn. Greece has struggled to meet the terms of this second package but hopes it has now done enough to satisfy the Troika, especially in achieving a ‘primary budget surplus’ — that is, in the black before debt costs.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said on Sunday that Greece in 2013 had achieved a primary surplus of more than ¤1.5bn — three times the target and one year early. “Our position is that the Troika should only return when enough work has been done to offer the prospect of a positive outcome,” EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a Eurogroup press conference.
“In view of the progress made, I can confirm we now expect our mission ... to return to Athens in coming days,” Rehn said.
“It is in everyone’s interest, especially Greece’s, to do what it must do,” he said, adding that the review could be finished by March and aid payments then made.
Officials said there is still ¤10.1bn in outstanding funds that could be paid to Greece under the current debt programme which runs to end of this year.
Given Greece’s massive outstanding debt — at more than 170 percent of total annual economic output, nearly three times the EU 60 percent limit — it is accepted that further help will be needed.
But Dijsselbloem said there was no need to look at that issue until later this year and Rehn stressed that the immediate issue is “to focus on the current review and its conclusion.” “If the current programme is fulfilled, then further (aid) disbursements can take place by May which will take (Greece) through to August,” Dijsselbloem said earlier.
“In August, we will talk about the future,” he said, adding: “The debt has to be reduced and that is precisely what we will talk about after the summer.”
In November, the eurozone finance ministers agreed that Greece could apply for help in reducing its debt so as to offer some way out for an economy which has been mired in recession for six years and seemed on the point of collapse several times at the height of the debt crisis. AFP
