Athens--Greece's outspoken Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis on Tuesday urged the country's international creditors to "get their act together" and help cobble together a new loan deal before the struggling nation's money runs out.
The call came amid the Greek government's inability to agree with its creditors -- the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank -- on reforms that would unlock some 7.2 billion euros ($7.9 billion) in promised bailout funds.
"It's about time the institutions, in particular the IMF, get their act together, and come to an agreement with us," Varoufakis told CNN.
"It's about time they come to the table and meet us, not half the way, but one quarter of the way, we have already met them three quarters of the way," Varoufakis said.
The talks resumed on Tuesday, with the two sides haggling over tax issues, social insurance, labour rights and the size of Greece's budget surplus.
The government hopes to secure an agreement by early June at the latest.
The European Union's economic affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici agreed that the discussions had to "speed up."
"We are aware of the liquidity problems in Greece and this is why it's so important now that negotiations that take place in Brussels speed up," he said on the sidelines of a conference in Dublin.
"We want that agreement, we want it fast, we are working on it hard," he said.
"The prime minister... has instructed our negotiators at technical level to speed things up," the ruling Syriza party's top European Parliament lawmaker Dimitris Papadimoulis told Skai TV.
AFP
