Greece will not make a debt repayment to the IMF due next month, as it does not have the money, Minister of the Interior and Administrative Reconstruction Nikos Voutsis said on Sunday.
“The four installments for the IMF in June are 1.6 billion euros [US$1.8 billion]; this money will not be given and is not there to be given,” Voutsis told Greek Mega TV’s weekend show.
Shut out of bond markets and with bailout aid locked, Athens has been scraping state coffers to meet debt obligations and to pay wages and pensions.
Earlier, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Greece cannot absorb more austerity and creditors must compromise to break the impasse over the release of funds for Athen’s cash-strapped economy.
Tsipras earlier sought to placate critics within his SYRIZA party after returning from an EU summit in Riga, Latvia, where talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande failed to yield a breakthrough on measures to unlock bailout funding. Some members of his party advocate defaulting on loans rather than backing down from the anti-austerity policies that swept it to power in January, even if that leads the country out of the eurozone.
“We have shown willingness to compromise to get to a mutually beneficial solution,” Tsipras said in a speech at the start of a two-day meeting of SYRIZA’s central committee on Saturday. “[However,] we ask from our partners the same respect, and to also make concessions.”
A Greek exit from the euro is just a matter of time and would not lead to the breakup of monetary union, former US Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan told Het Financieele Dagblad in an interview published on Saturday.
An exit could make the euro stronger, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said in an interview in the Euro-am-Sonntag newspaper.
German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schaeuble mentioned the possibility that Greece might need a parallel currency alongside the euro, if the nation’s talks with creditors fail, according to two people who attended a recent meeting, who added that he did not endorse the idea.
The German Ministry of Finance on Friday called the account of Schaeuble’s remarks “inaccurate.”
Negotiators from Greece and its creditors are continuing technical talks in the so-called Brussels Group “over the coming days in order to accelerate progress,” European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said on Friday.
Eurozone finance officials, known as the Euro Working Group, are to hold a teleconference on Thursday to discuss Greece, two people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named in line with policy.
Before then, the European Central Bank’s Governing Council is to hold its weekly review of emergency liquidity support to the nation’s lenders.
Pensions, sales-tax rates and targets for a primary budget surplus are among the open issues remaining between Greece and its creditors, a Greek government official told reporters after the meeting between Tsipras, Merkel and Hollande.
A main obstacle is that the IMF needs to be on board, he said.
“I know that there is a lot of work to be done, that the parties are now working,” IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said on Friday in Brazil. “It has to be a comprehensive approach and, as I said in other places, it cannot be a quick and dirty job. The IMF is not known for doing that, nor are the other partners in the negotiations.”
Failure to reach a deal quickly would create immediate hardship for Greece, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Tsipras in a telephone call on Friday, according to an e-mail from the US Treasury.
NEW MARKET: The partnership opens up India to the Dutch company, which already has a strong hold in the semiconductor market of South Korea, Taiwan and China ASML Holding NV entered into a partnership agreement with Tata Electronics Pvt Ltd aimed at ramping up India’s goal to develop domestic chip-manufacturing capabilities. The Dutch company’s technology would help power Tata Electronics’ planned 300 millimeter (mm) semiconductor foundry in Gujarat, according to a joint statement from the two companies on Saturday. The signing of a memorandum of understanding coincides with a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Netherlands, which is looking to deepen bilateral relations with New Delhi. ASML, whose top customers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co, makes lithography machines that can print
ROUGH RECORDS: Bonds in Japan, as well is in New Zealand, Australia and the US, are seeing the effects of a nervy market as stock exchanges across Asia edge down A deepening slump in Japanese government bonds added fuel to the selloff in global debt markets as rising oil prices stoked inflation fears and pushed yields to multi-decade highs. Japan’s 30-year yield yesterday surged as much as 20 basis points to the highest level since the tenor’s debut in 1999, before paring some of the move. Shorter-maturity Japanese debt was also under pressure, underscored by weak demand at a sale of five-year notes that offered a record-high coupon of 2 percent. Concerns over inflation and government spending rippling through markets including the US, Australia and New Zealand are being amplified in Japan,
The US has cleared about 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia Corp’s second-most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far, three people familiar with the matter said, leaving a major technology deal in limbo as chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) seeks a breakthrough in China this week. Huang, who was not initially listed in a White House delegation to Beijing, joined the trip after an invitation from US President Donald Trump, a source said. Trump picked him up in Alaska en route to a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping
Wall Street is licking its chops over an unprecedented slate of massive initial public offerings (IPOs) set to arrive in the coming months, beginning with Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) next month. That is expected to be followed by artificial intelligence (AI) rivals OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. The trio of mega listings, each eyeing valuations around US$1 trillion or more, constitutes a heady period of elevated risk and reward. SpaceX is targeting an IPO that would raise up to US$80 billion — about double the funds generated from all IPOs last year. OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing IPOs raising US$60 billion. “We’re
RSS