Greece admitted yesterday it will struggle to make debt repayments to the IMF and the European Central Bank this year as Germany’s Finance Minister voiced open doubts about Athens’ trustworthiness.
A day after eurozone finance ministers agreed to a four-month extension of a financial rescue for the currency bloc’s most heavily indebted member, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis gave a frank assessment of Greece’s financial position.
“We will not have liquidity problems for the public sector. But we will definitely have problems in making debt payments to the IMF now and to the ECB in July,” he told Alpha Radio.
He put no figure on the funding gap. After interest payments this month of about €2 billion , Athens must repay an IMF loan of around €1.6 billion that matures in March and about €7.5 billion for maturing bonds held by the ECB in July and August. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, revelling in his role as the eurozone’s grumpy paymaster, said no further aid would be paid out until Greece fulfilled the conditions of its bailout programme.
The question now is whether one can believe the Greek government’s assurances or not
“The question now is whether one can believe the Greek government’s assurances or not. There’s a lot of doubt in Germany, that has to be understood,” he told SWR2 radio.
Fuelling German suspicion, a hardline leftist in Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ radical new government appeared to row back on a commitment made to creditors a day in Brussels earlier not to halt privatisations that are already under way.
Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis said the government would not go ahead with the sale of the main electricity utility PPC or power grid operator ADIME
“The companies have not submitted binding bids so it will not be completed,” he told Ethnos newspaper.
That drew an angry response from Berlin, where a finance ministry spokesman said Athens could not decide to delay or stop privatisations on its own.
Despite scepticism in both governments and dissenting voices on their fringes, the four-month bailout extension seems certain to be approved by the German and Greek parliaments this week.
However, the next round of negotiations on Greece’s debt mountain will start as soon as those votes go through, and take place under the shadow of a looming repayment crunch.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seeking to convince doubters in her own conservative bloc and the public, said the extension deal was preferable to the alternative.
“I welcome the fact that we have found a starting point for negotiations with the new government.
“This is gratifying when you see what was being talked about weeks ago,” she said in an oblique reference to the risk of Greece going bankrupt and being forced out of the euro area.
“In the last few days we managed to show we are all able to make compromises, which is not unimportant, though it is far from being everything,” she told a news conference.
Berlin has ruled out any debt write-down for Athens and Schaeuble’s spokesman said it was premature to talk now about either a precautionary credit line or a third bailout programme when the four months expire.
Varoufakis said he wants discussion of debt restructuring to begin immediately and encompass bond swaps that would 'significantly reduce the debt' to official creditors.
If European leaders 'shoot down' Greece's anti-austerity government, they would drive the country into the arms of racists and nationalists, he told French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.