Greece close to minimum agreement deal with creditors, says deputy PM
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Version 0 of 1. Greece could seal a deal with its creditors in early May, its deputy prime minister said on Wednesday, as the country prepared a new list of reforms and the European Central Bank provided more support to its beleaguered banks. But Yannis Dragasakis warned it was likely to be only a “minimum agreement” to unlock the delayed funds Greece needed to avoid default. He said: “Now we are going to a minimum agreement with actions that can be taken immediately. But [in the long-term] not just any solution will suffice. The solution has to be viable. After the interim agreement a long discussion about the debt, primary surpluses, investment and growth will follow.” A eurozone official told Reuters time was running out to reach a deal about releasing the emergency funds, which amount to €7.2bn (£5.2bn), since the country needed to begin negotiating a third bailout agreement before the current programme runs out at the end of June. Otherwise it faced the prospect of default or having to leave the eurozone. He said: “We are not talking about weeks any more, we are talking about days.” If the latest Greek proposals were approved, eurozone finance ministers could endorse the deal at their next meeting on 11 May. Greece’s creditors – the European Union, ECB and the International Monetary Fund – are demanding economic reforms in exchange for more bailout cash. But the impasse could still prove difficult to break, since the new reforms were not expected to offer any major new concessions even though previous plans had been rejected. Due to be presented to the Greek parliament this week, they are said to include measures to clamp down on corruption and tax evasion, as well as tax and public administration reforms and a delay in plans to raise the minimum wage. But the Syriza-led government will continue resisting significant changes to pensions or reforms of the labour market. Euclid Tsakalotos, the Oxford-educated economics professor who now heads the Greek negotiating team in the debt talks, said Greece had to keep to its “red lines” on reforms and that any “areas of compromise” should be within the “political plan” of the radical government, which was elected on an anti-austerity ticket. Greece is due to make a €200m payment to the International Monetary Fund on Friday, with another €760m due on 12 May. Meanwhile, Greek bank deposits fell to a 10-year low in March, as savers continued to worry about the country’s finances and the continuing impasse over releasing bailout funds. They dropped 1.36% month on month to €138.55bn from €140.47bn, the sixth monthly fall in a row albeit at a slower pace than in February. But the European Central Bank reportedly raised the amount of emergency liquidity available to Greek banks. It lifted the cap on emergency liquidity assistance by €1.4bn to €76.9bn, after an increase of around €1.5bn last week. On Tuesday night, tensions in the country flared when finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, fresh from reports he had been sidelined in the debt negotiations, ran into trouble with a group of anarchists while he was out for a meal with his wife, installation artist Danae Stratou. Insults were exchanged as the group argued with Varoufakis, but the finance minister talked his way out of a more serious confrontation. |