Eurozone nations including Malta today transferred their first €14.5 billion in rescue loans to Greece to save Athens from debt default, the European Commission said.

"The money has been transferred," the commission spokesman said, confirming overnight comments by EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.

Malta's contribution was an initial €14.5 million. It has commited itself to contribute €74m.

The rescue funds come in the nick of time to enable Greece to repay a €9 billion euros 10-year-bond maturing tomorrow.

"The sum of €14.5 billion has been released by the European Commission, via the European Central Bank, to a Greek state account at the Bank of Greece," the Greek finance ministry said in Athens.

"These funds cover Greece's immediate and short-term loan requirements and obligations," the ministry said, with 10 of his country's 15 eurozone partners contributing with bilateral loans.

The list was headed by German state bank KfW which provided some €4.4 billion while France gave more than 3.3 billion, with other contributions from Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Malta.

The remaining eurozone countries are Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Slovenia and Slovakia.

Rehn told reporters on the sidelines of a eurozone finance ministers' meeting in Brussels, that "the first tranche for financial assistance for Greece is being transferred today."

The €14.5 billion from Greece's eurozone partners follows €5.5 billion from the International Monetary Fund, which Greece received last week.

The loans are part of an overall rescue package of 110 billion euros for debt-stricken Greece by the EU and the IMF over the next three years.

Athens will receive another nine billion euros in September including 6.5 billion from eurozone members and 2.5 billion from the IMF, according to the Greek finance ministry.

A third nine-billion-euro installment will be made in December in the same way, the ministry said.

Athens is paying a painful price for the unprecedented bailout -- the first involving IMF aid to a member of the eurozone -- with the government forced to slash civil servants' pay and pensions while raising taxes.

It is battling to avert default whilst mired in a deepening recession and is trying to rein in a public deficit of over 30 billion euros to prevent a debt mountain of nearly 300 billion euros from growing even higher.

The multi-billion euro loan will provide Greece with funds at much lower rates than it can attract on the open market, as its credit rating has been shot down by the ratings agencies.

Despite persistent doubts on Greece's ability to repay the loans, eurozone finance ministers on Monday again assured Athens of their support.

"We continue to believe, and we have good reason to believe, that Greece is on the right track," Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the Eurogroup of finance ministers, told reporters in Brussels.

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