Greece reaches new deal with lenders after marathon talks

Greece and international creditors agreed on a new multibillion-euro bailout deal early on Tuesday after talks continued overnight, a finance ministry official said, adding that the deal will keep the country in the eurozone and avert bankruptcy.


“Two or three small issues” are still pending in the agreement with lenders, Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told reporters, following 23 hours of talks with European institutions and the International Monetary Fund that began Monday morning in Athens.

Greece and its international creditors were locked in talks overnight to seal a multibillion-euro bailout deal, racing against a countdown to European Central Bank (ECB) debt repayments falling due within days.

The indebted country was hoping to wrap up a deal for €86 billion ($94.75 billion) in fresh loans so it can get parliamentary and other approvals for aid to flow by August 20, when a €3.2 billion debt payment is due to the ECB.

“We are going into the final round of talks, looking at the Memorandum of Understanding from beginning to end,” a senior Greek government official said during a brief break in talks in Athens, referring to the terms of the bailout accord.

An agreement would mark the end of a painful chapter of aid talks for Greece, which fought against the austerity terms demanded by creditors for much of the year before accepting a deal under the threat of being kicked out of the eurozone.

The latest round of negotiations started early on Monday afternoon.

After lengthy negotiations on both Sunday and Monday, Greece's finance minister said talks were going “quite well” and was optimistic that an agreement will be reached soon.

“I don’t know if it will be [Tuesday] morning, but ‘soon’ means soon,” Tsakalotos told reporters.

Both sides agreed on the final fiscal targets that should govern the bailout effort, aiming for a primary budget surplus (which excludes interest payments) from 2016, a government official said.

The targets foresee a primary budget deficit of 0.25 percent of gross domestic product in 2015, a 0.5 percent surplus from 2016, 1.75 percent in 2017 and a 3.5 percent surplus in 2018, the official said.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)
 france24.com
11/8/15
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