2015-06-01 07:53:00

Greece enters a critical financial week


(Vatican Radio) Greece enters a super-critical week on Monday morning, when the country’s leaders expect a long-awaited deal with its creditors – or probable bankruptcy.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, told the French newspaper Le Monde that his government has gone a long way towards meeting the creditors’ painful demands for cost-cutting and reform.  He urged more understanding on the part of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and major creditor nations such as Germany and France.

Listen to this report from our Athens Correspondent John Carr

The atmosphere here in Athens has been getting steadily more tense, with the banks bleeding deposits at record rates.  On Friday Greece has to come up with 300 million euros for an IMF loan repayment, plus another 300 million euros on the Friday after that.

And that’s not all.  On 16 June 600 million euros will have to be forked over to the IMF, plus 300 million three days later.  In July and August Greece will have to pay out 6.7 billion euros in redeemed bonds. Small wonder that Greece’s economy slipped back into recession in the first quarter of this year. Despite pessimism in Europe’s capitals, Tsipras remains confident that a last-minute deal will be struck to unlock a desperately-needed 7.2 billion euros in bailout funds. And the general feeling across the political board here in Athens is that any deal, even a  bad one, would be better than no deal at all and a Grexit.








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