Greece and its European creditors are “very close” to an agreement that would open the way to vital debt talks, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Pierre Moscovici said on Monday.
However, first the Greek government had to complete an ongoing audit of its latest fiscal reforms to enable a “package deal” on further structural changes and debt talks, Moscovici said on a two-day visit to Athens.
“I think we are very close to an agreement ... if we are capable of concluding the review, then we must absolutely open ... debt talks,” he told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Photo: Reuters
“It cannot be done ... in just one meeting, but [there needs to be] a sequence, which Monday next week at which the debt issue is expected to be discussed.
“We need to reach a staff-level agreement by the end of this week ... it’s absolutely doable,” Moscovici then told reporters.
Greece’s budget for next year, to be approved by parliament on Saturday next week, includes extra taxation on cars, fixed telephony, pay television, fuel, tobacco, coffee and beer.
Greece’s leftist-led government is desperate to reach agreement with the creditors on the new fiscal measures before the end of the year in order to secure a pledge of debt relief, hoping it will kick-start the nation’s ailing economy.
Athens is also hoping that a deal will persuade the European Central Bank to include Greek sovereign debt in its asset purchase program, known as quantitative easing or QE.
Without debt relief, the ECB will not grant Greece access to QE, and without this, the country will not be able to return to borrowing markets by early 2018, Greek Minister of Finance Euclid Tsakalotos said on Monday.
Greece’s debt will grow to 315 billion euros (US$334 billion) or about 180 percent of output this year, according to the Greek Ministry of Finance.
ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure, who is also in Athens, on Monday said that there were “serious concerns” about the sustainability of Greece’s crushing debt.
“All stakeholders in the Greek adjustment program realize that there are serious concerns about the sustainability of Greek public debt,” Coeure told an Athens conference.
“We are looking forward to a solution that can reassure markets,” he said, one that would “allow the full involvement of the IMF in the program [to] enhance the program’s credibility.”
The goal is to “ultimately restore market access for Greece before the [present EU bailout] ends in July 2018,” Coeure said.
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
RSS