Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis was scheduled to meet IMF managing director Christine Lagarde in Washington yesterday ahead of the country’s Thursday deadline for its next payment to the fund. Varoufakis and Lagarde were to have informal discussions on the Greek government’s reform program, according to the IMF and a Greek Ministry of Finance statement released on Saturday.
A government source told reporters that Varoufakis “will also meet with US Treasury officials” tomorrow, including US Under Secretary for International Affairs Nathan Sheets.
The meetings come amid speculation that Athens might fail to pay a 460 million euro (US$501.17 million) IMF installment if forced to choose between the IMF and paying government workers.
Greece has not received the funds remaining in its 240 billion euro EU-IMF bailout package as Brussels has demanded it first approve Greece’s revised reform plan. However, Greek Alternate Minister of Revenue Dimitris Mardas on Saturday said that Athens does have the money needed for the IMF payment.
“The payment to the IMF will take place on April 9. There is money for the payment of salaries, pensions and whatever else is needed in the next week,” he told Greek television network Mega TV.
The IMF meanwhile denied a report in German magazine Der Spiegel that it had withdrawn IMF staff temporarily in protest at the Greek government’s slowness in implementing reforms.
Greek Minister of Productive Reconstruction, the Environment and Energy Panagiotis Lafazanis, who leads the far-left wing of the SYRIZA party, accused Greece’s European partners of being annoyed at having to work with a left-wing government.
“The institutions and especially the German establishment are treating the government with doctrinal superstition and the country like a semi-colonial state,” he told the Agora newspaper. “They are not interested in the content of our proposals, but they are bothered those proposals are coming from a radical left-led government... That annoys them to the point of hysteria.”
Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has stepped up his courting of Russia. Tsipras, who was already scheduled to visit Russia next month for its annual Victory Day parade, is now also set to travel to Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Tsipras has made no secret of seeking closer ties to Russia.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
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