Greece yesterday extended its offer to buy back debt until today, seeking more bids from bondholders after falling short of a target to retire bonds worth €30 billion at a cost of just €10 billion.

The buy-back is designed to provide for about half a €40 billion debt relief package for Athens agreed last month by the EU and the International Monetary Fund.

Its success is crucial to ensuring Greece’s debt is put back on sustainable footing and – more immediately – to unlocking badly-needed aid for the country, on track for its sixth year of recession.

Despite the initial lack of investor interest, the scheme is expected to ultimately hit its targets since Greek banks are expected to stump up the shortfall.

A total of €26.5 billion was tendered at an average price of 33.4 per cent of face value when the offer expired on Friday.

That would mean Greece would still have €1.15 billion left over from the €10 billion it was allotted to spend to retire outstanding debt. Assuming the same average price, it could buy an extra €3.5 billion worth of bonds.

Greece’s debt agency extended the offer to 1pm today following Friday’s deadline.

“The aim is to reach the €30 billion target on the face value of debt to be bought back,” said a government official, who declined to be named, adding the aim was to use all of the €10 billion given by lenders for the buyback.

Eurozone finance ministers will meet on Thursday in Brussels to review the buy-back operation and formally release the next disbursement of loans to Greece under its second international rescue programme.