Greece’s EU lenders have been working on a plan to offer the country gradual debt relief on condition that it adopts additional reforms by 2022, the Agora weekly newspaper reported on Saturday.
They would initially allow lower interest rates and longer maturities on Greece’s 316 billion euro (US$352 billion) debt, the paper said.
At a later stage, there would be talks on linking debt payments to economic growth provided Athens implemented measures to be agreed with creditors by 2022, it added.
Photo: EPA
The plan has been discussed among officials from the European Commission, the euro zone’s rescue fund, the European Central Bank and the larger euro zone nations, the paper said.
The lenders have publicly spoken about granting debt relief to Greece on condition reforms are completed.
Asked about the report, Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb said: “At this moment, we are not looking at debt relief, but at completing the third program’s first interim review.”
On Thursday, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the eurozone finance ministers group, had said they were concerned with the quality of the reforms Greece had promised in return for its bailout.
Negotiations between the heads of the EU/IMF mission reviewing the country’s progress on a pensions overhaul, fiscal targets and the handling of bad loans took a break earlier this month.
It was unclear when the lenders would return in Athens. Without their positive first assessment of the reforms, Greece cannot start relief talks it is seeking to show austerity-weary Greeks their sacrifices are paying off.
Speaking after an EU summit that on Friday agreed a deal to help keep Britain in the bloc and tackle the region’s migration crisis, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said all EU partners agreed the review needed to conclude as soon as possible.
Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos on Saturday said that differences between the EU and the IMF over the bailout program were undermining government efforts to help the Greek economy recover after years of recession.
The IMF has said that it stands ready to support Greece only if the country’s EU partners granted it “significant” debt relief.
However, Europe has made clear that it wants conclusion of the review before launching debt relief talks.
The IMF’s director for Europe, Poul Thomsen, last week said that Greece would also need to implement extra measures worth about 9 billion euros to meet its fiscal targets by 2018.
“The whole pressure is on us. So, I can’t see how the IMF thinks its role as that of an “honest broker,” Tsakalotos said in an interview with weekly Realnews paper.
“Footdragging in the negotiations is hindering the government strategy to get out of the vicious circle of measures-recession-new measures,” he said.
In an interview with another Greek newspaper, Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis said the review could be wrapped up by the end of next month.
“The target for the Catholic Easter [March 27] is absolutely realistic,” he was quoted as saying in the weekly Ependysi. “I believe that there will be a deal.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained