Greece started loosening restrictions on foreign transfers by businesses on Friday, unblocking imports held up after the country introduced capital controls last month.
Businesses have been hit by limits on transferring money abroad to pay for imports of raw material and other items since the controls started on June 29, and have had to apply to a special committee for permission to pay their foreign suppliers, a time-consuming process.
“The daily limit [on money transfers] has been raised to 100,000 euros [US$109,740] from 50,000 euros,” Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras told reporters, adding that this covered almost 70 percent of requests.
Stournaras said conditions for businesses were improving and authorities aimed to resolve pending issues in the next 10 days.
“As far as approvals are concerned, we are now very close to the monthly imports the Greek economy was registering before the crisis,” he said after meeting business leaders on Friday.
On Friday, the government also issued a decree easing restrictions for shipping companies by allowing them to withdraw up to 50,000 euros in cash a day.
Greece reopened its banks on Monday after it secured a 7.2 billion euro bridging loan to pay its debt obligations and enacted tough reforms demanded by its lenders to start negotiations on a third bailout.
The banks’ three-weeks shutdown has cost Greek businesses 3 billion euros, Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Constantinos Michalos said, with many firms warning of closures as a result of the capital curbs.
Greece has approved requests for money transfers totalling 1.585 billion euros from June 29 to July 23, much of it earmarked for energy imports, the Bank of Greece said on Friday.
Meanwhile, Greece on Friday invited the IMF to participate in its negotiations with European creditors over a vital third bailout — talks that are expected to start next week after a few days’ delay and must conclude before Greece faces another big repayment on Aug. 20.
Negotiators are now expected to arrive in Athens over the weekend, with talks probably starting tomorrow, Greek officials said.
In a statement issued on Friday evening, the IMF confirmed it had received Greece’s request for a new IMF loan and said it would work to arrange talks with Greece and its European creditors.
Athens is looking to secure yet another bailout — the third since its finances imploded in 2009 — worth 85 billion euros over three years. Without the money, the country faces imminent bankruptcy and a probable exit from the shared euro currency.
Additional reporting by AP
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to