Greece given six days to improve reforms

Greece has made another plea to the eurozone for cash to avert bankruptcy but has been told to present an improved list of economic reforms within six working days for finance ministers to pave the way for any more lending, EU officials said yesterday.

Athens appealed for liquidity support at a meeting of deputy finance ministers in Brussels on Wednesday night but was told there must, first, be progress on the stalled list of measures to make public finances sustainable.

“From the Greek side, there was a strong statement that liquidity is getting really bad and an appeal to release some type of liquidity support before the eurozone finance ministers’ meeting on April 24,” a eurozone aide said.

“But, no one knows how this could be done — there is no willingness to provide support before there is some progress in terms of the reform programme,” the official said.

Greece told the same forum, last week, that it would have difficulty paying back an instalment to the IMF, due yesterday, and covering its expenses for wages and pensions. But it subsequently said it would make the IMF payment on time.

Officials said eurozone experts were not convinced the liquidity position was as dire as portrayed by Athens, and some suspected an attempt to scare creditors into releasing funds.

Greece’s creditors are determined to use their leverage to push through long-delayed reforms that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist government is resisting on social grounds.

“The mood was better than last time, but the substance was as murky as ever,” another eurozone official said of Wednesday’s talks.

There was a slight improvement in technical co-operation between Greece and the lenders, but little progress on the content of the reforms.

“We are still lacking detail on specific measures, especially in terms of their fiscal implication and time is getting very short — decisions should be made on April 24 which is the next meeting of the Eurogroup in Riga,” he said.

Once Athens agrees on a set of measures with its creditors and passes laws through parliament to implement them, it could get €7.2bn that remains to be disbursed from its existing €240bn international bailout.

But after 10 weeks in office, the Tsipras government has been unable to agree with lenders, mainly because many of the measures run counter to his election promises to put an end to austerity and refuse “recessionary” measures.

As a result, Greece has not had any new funding from the eurozone or the IMF. Since it remains cut off from markets and the ECB has rationed emergency funds for its banks, Athens says it is quickly running out of money. For any new lending to occur, officials said Athens would first have to put agreed reforms into law in parliament.

Reuters