Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had at one stage warned foreign creditors that Athens would not repay 750 million euros (US$854.25 million) due to the IMF this month unless they provided Athens with immediate liquidity, the Kathimerini newspaper reported last week.
Athens ultimately made the May 12 payment by emptying an IMF holding account.
Citing European sources, the newspaper said Tsipras made the threat in a May 8 letter to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde and European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi.
The Greek government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his letter, Tsipras said Greece was starved of domestic sources of liquidity as it has been meeting its domestic and foreign debt obligations despite not having received any aid under its 240 billion euro bailout since August last year, the newspaper said.
To restore liquidity, Tsipras proposed that the ECB raise Greece’s treasury bill issuance ceiling; a partial disbursement of loan tranches worth 7.3 billion euros; the return of 1.9 billion euros in profits the ECB made by buying Greek bonds since 2010; and the return of 1.2 billion euros in the eurozone’s bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility.
The letter was viewed as a “possible bluff” and reinforced a climate of mistrust between the two sides, the newspaper said.
Greece’s cash reserves are dwindling and negotiations between Tsipras’s new left-led government and its lenders over a cash-for-reforms deal have been fraught with delays for months.
Last week, Tsipras said that the two sides had found some common ground, but the government would not back down from its red lines such as no cuts to wages and pensions.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
A man walks past real-estate advertisements outside a house in Taipei yesterday. The central bank yesterday said it plans to establish an “Inflation-at-Risk” gauge as a supplementary tool for observing inflation, as policymakers express wish to communicate more effectively with the public when making inflation forecasts.
ABOVE LEGAL REQUIREMENT: The Ministry of Economic Affairs is prepared if LNG supply is disrupted, with more than the legal requirement of 11 days of inventory Taiwan has largely secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies through May and arranged about half of June’s supply, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Since the Middle East conflict began on Feb. 28, Taiwan’s LNG inventories have remained more than 12 days, exceeding the legal requirement of 11 days, indicating no major supply concerns for domestic gas and electricity, Kung said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. The ministry aims to increase the figure to 14 days by the end of next year, he said. While one or two LNG or crude oil shipments for May
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS