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Greece is seeking an agreement this weekend to quickly repay about half of the loans contracted from the International Monetary Fund to reduce the burden of debt service of countries in the euro area, said Friday a senior official.
A Greek national flag on the roof of a building in Athens, Greece, February 8, 2018. REUTERS / Costas Baltas
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WASHINGTON: Greece is seeking an agreement this weekend to quickly repay about half of all loans from the International Monetary Fund to reduce the debt burden of eurozone countries, a senior official said Friday. .
IMF loans, granted to Greece as part of the country's bailouts since 2010, cost Athens about 5% per year and are now more expensive than market financing, where 10-year benchmark bonds are Exchange around 3.3%.
"The repayment of the IMF will be agreed this weekend," told Reuters the senior official, who requested anonymity, on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.
The official said that Germany and the Netherlands were resisting the decision, fearing that the IMF would want to withdraw from the periodic reviews of Greek reforms by its lenders, without however defeating this decision.
"They are confident that the IMF will continue to be part of the review, so they will drop it and they will pay back about half, between 4 and 5 billion euros," said the official. .
The euro zone bailout fund, which, according to the rules, should be repaid the same amount, should waive this right, pleased with the improvement in the viability of the Greek debt that such an operation would produce said fund manager Klaus Regling last week.
On April 3, Reuters announced that Greece was planning to issue a bond at the end of June to raise funds for repayment.
Greece, the most indebted state in the euro zone, with debt equivalent to 180% of its annual output, has to repay about 9.3 billion euros of loans to the IMF by 2024.
This debt carries rates of up to 5%, against about 0.9% for loans from governments of the euro area countries via the rescue fund.
Greece has received more than 280 billion euros from its euro area and IMF partners since 2010. It has repaid more than 15 billion euros in short-term loans to the IMF since 2010.
Athens has a cash volume of more than 27 billion euros from money from markets and unused rescue loans. This amount would be enough to keep it afloat until 2021 without raising new funds on the markets.
(Written by Jan Strupczewski, edited by Paul Simao)
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