Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday said his government would not back down from its red lines in negotiations with its foreign lenders, but said a deal must be reached soon following months of talks.
Athens is fast running out of cash and talks with EU and IMF lenders on more aid have been deadlocked over their demands for Greece to implement reforms, including pension cuts and labor-market liberalization.
Tsipras said the two sides had largely agreed on fiscal targets and value-added tax rates, but disagreed on labor issues and pension reform. He said an accord should include low primary budget surplus targets for this fiscal year and a debt restructuring.
“The deal must close there is no doubt about it,” Tsipras told a press conference. “However, some cannot have in the back of their minds the idea that, as time goes by, the Greek side’s resilience will be tested and its red lines will fade out. If some people have it in the back of their minds, they should forget it.”
Athens has depended on money from its 240 billion euro (US$275 billion) EU/IMF bailout to keep paying its bills since 2010. It has not received any loan tranches since August last year. Greece hopes to reach a deal by the end of the month.
Earlier on Friday, the Greek Ministry of Finance said it had paid public sector wages due in the middle of this month, confirming scheduled payments as the country struggles to stay solvent, although it might find it harder to meet wage and pension commitments later this month, as well as debt payments due next month.
For months, the government has been borrowing from different parts of the state administration to pay the wages and pensions of public sector workers.
Tsipras, who came to power in January on promises to end austerity measures, said the government would not agree to further cuts to wages and pensions, a highly sensitive issue in Greece, which is in the midst of a six-year recession, rising poverty and joblessness.
“From this podium I want to assure the Greek people that there is no possibility or chance that the Greek government will back down on pension and labor issues,” he said.
Meanwhile, ratings firm Fitch kept Greece’s high-risk credit rating unchanged on Friday, saying the risk that the eurozone country would default on its debt was a “real possibility.”
Fitch Ratings affirmed the “CCC” rating it gave the debt-riddled eurozone country in late March in a two-notch downgrade from “B.”
“Lack of market access, uncertain prospects of timely disbursement from official institutions and tight liquidity conditions in the domestic banking sector are putting extreme pressure on Greek government funding,” Fitch said in a statement. “We expect that the government will survive the current liquidity squeeze without running arrears on privately held bonds, but default is a real possibility.”
The ratings firm forecast zero growth in the economy this year, with risks “heavily tilted” toward a contraction, as the country runs out of cash and faces debt payments to its creditors.
Still, Fitch said it was likely that Greece would reach a compromise deal with its official creditors.
Additional reporting by AFP
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
RSS