Greece will not make a repayment tomorrow to the IMF if there is no prospect of an aid-for-reforms deal with its international creditors, the spokesman for Greece’s ruling SYRIZA Party’s lawmakers said yesterday.
The payment of 300 million euros (US$334 million) is the first of four this month totaling 1.6 billion euros from a nation that depends on foreign aid to stay afloat.
Greece owes a total of about 320 billion euros — about 65 percent to eurozone governments and the IMF, and about 8.7 percent to the European Central Bank.
On Tuesday, Greece’s creditors drafted the broad outlines of an agreement to submit to the leftist government in Athens in a bid to conclude four months of negotiations and release aid before Greece runs out of money.
“If there is no prospect of a deal by Friday or Monday, I do not know by when exactly, we will not pay,” SYRIZA parliamentary group spokesman Nikos Filis told Mega TV.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was scheduled to travel to Brussels yesterday to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Tsipras, who has vowed not to surrender to more austerity, tried to pre-empt a take-it-or-leave-it offer by the creditors, sending what he called a comprehensive reform proposal to Brussels on Monday.
A SYRIZA European Parliament lawmaker said the government’s 47-page proposal would be a good basis for discussion at a meeting of eurozone deputy finance ministers in the so-called Euro Working Group which was to convene yesterday.
“If the lenders show the same realism that the Greek government and the Greek prime minister is showing, then we can have a deal in principle by Friday or before Friday,” Greek European Parliamentarian Dimitris Papadimoulis told Antenna TV.
He said this could turn into a comprehensive deal next week.
“[However,] right now there is no deal, there is convergence,” he said.
Greek Alternate Minister for Social Security Dimitris Stratoulis said a deal with lenders would have to respect the government’s commitments.
“The agreement will either be compatible with SYRIZA’s policy pledges, the core, or there will not be a deal,” he told Antenna TV.
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