Tokyo - The euro lost ground against the dollar and the yen in Asian trade Friday after hopes for a Greek debt deal began to recede.
Greece's emergency negotiations with its creditors -- the European Union and the International Monetary Fund -- ended abruptly Thursday, pushing the crisis toward a critical weekend meeting in a bid to avoid a default by Athens and its potential exit from the eurozone.
Talks will resume on Saturday, just days before the June 30 deadline for Greece to make a 1.5 billion euro payment to the IMF, and the day its EU bailout will expire.
Greece needs creditors to unlock the remaining 7.2 billion euros in its bailout to pay the IMF.
The euro fetched $1.1185 and 138.16 yen in Tokyo, down from $1.1206 and 138.53 yen in New York.
The dollar was changing hands at 123.52 yen against 123.62 yen in US trade.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Saturday would be "decisive" for finding a debt deal for Greece.
"We have to keep working because time is pressing and the Eurogroup on Saturday will have a decisive importance," Merkel told a news conference early Friday at an EU summit in Brussels.
The Greek debt crisis "continues to be the focus (in the market) through this weekend," Shinichiro Kadota, forex analyst at Barclays Bank, Japan, said in a note to clients.
Traders barely reacted to a set of Japanese data issued on Friday.
Japanese consumer prices grew a tepid 0.1 percent year-on-year in May while household spending rose for the first time in more than a year, official data showed.
Separate data from the internal affairs ministry showed household spending rose 4.8 percent on-year in May, posting the first rise since Japan hiked sales taxes in April last year to help pay down a huge national debt.
The jobless rate was unchanged at an 18-year low of 3.3 percent in May.
AFP
