Greece

Greece wants to repay loans owed to its lenders from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund before they are due in a bid to cut its debt servicing costs, its finance minister said on Tuesday. Greece, whose public debt amounts to 180 percent of its gross domestic product, has received loans totalling about 280 billion euros under three international bailouts since 2010, Reuters reported. The ECB holds about 12 billion euros worth of Greek debt with an average maturity of four years and the IMF about 10 billion euros with an average maturity of three years.

The Greek government is urging bailout inspectors to drop their insistence that it cuts pension further next year, arguing the country is on target to beat budget targets without doing so, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. In its draft 2019 budget, tabled to parliament Monday, the government said Greece's economy will grow 2.5 percent next year, with debt and unemployment steadily falling too. In the 44-page document , it said the issue of pension cuts would be decided later this year.

The Greek government is owed so much in tax arrears from households and companies that it could pay off more than half its massive public debts if it collected it all. Unfortunately for the government, that's unlikely to ever happen, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Data from the Independent Authority for Public Revenue show tax arrears totaled 182.5 billion euros ($214 billion) on Aug. 10, according to a note sent from the agency to parliament last week and seen by The Associated Press Wednesday.

Greece will meet primary surplus targets of 3.5 percent of GDP until 2022 as required by its creditors, but the policies to achieve that will be determined by the Greek government, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the European Parliament on Tuesday. Greece exited the euro zone's bailout programme, under which it received cheap loans in exchange for reforms, in August after eight years of economic restructuring that was necessary when Athens lost market access in 2010 because of its huge debts, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Greek banks made further progress during this year's second quarter in reducing their exposure to doubtful and non-performing loans, central bank data showed on Thursday. So-called non-performing exposures (NPEs) are the biggest challenge facing the sector, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. At the end of June they had fallen by 4.1 percent from the first quarter to 88.6 billion euros (79.7 billion pounds) or 47.6 percent of banks' overall loan book compared with a target of 90.2 billion euros or 46.9 percent.

After nine years of unprecedented peacetime economic hardship, Greece exits its IMF bailout programme. So ends a series of three bailouts organised by the so-called troika of the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission, Neos Kosmos reported. A total of €336 billion was lent to Greece in the wake of the financial crisis, to stop it defaulting on its national debt, with approximately €300 billion used so far. What’s more, over 90 percent of the funds were not directed toward investment projects, but went on servicing Greece’s national debt.

Alexis Tsipras, prime minister of Greece, has warned of “fresh battles ahead” as the country prepares its first budget measures following the end of its international bailout, the Financial Times reported. In his first public remarks since Athens’ exit from its eight-year rescue programme, Mr Tsipras said Greece was now free to “reshape its future . . . as a normal European country”.

Greeks…won’t be celebrating when Greece’s international financial bailout ends on Aug. 20, The Wall Street Journal reported. The moment will mark the symbolic end of the eurozone’s long debt crisis, which put the survival of the single currency in doubt. The Athens government hails the end of the bailout as a historic day when Greece recovers its national freedom and independence. European Union officials hold up Greece’s graduation from its bailout as proof that the bloc’s much-criticized crisis management succeeded.

Greece is about to exit its bailout, a symbolic move past a debt crisis that exploded eight years ago and left the economy, and the lives of its people, completely changed, Bloomberg News reported. At the time of the May 2010 aid package -- the first of three -- politicians from euro-area creditor countries argued the crisis was the result of chronic fiscal and economic indiscipline. To justify breaching a “no bailout clause,” loans were tied to strict conditions, covering fiscal sustainability, financial stability, growth and competitiveness, and reform of public administration and justice.

Greece’s exit from its bailout programme later this month is widely viewed as a big step forward in declaring an end to the crisis in the eurozone’s most troubled economy. But for the country’s banks, the end of the programme means it is about to become a little more difficult for them to secure cheap credit, the Financial Times reported. The reason? A quirk in the European Central Bank’s collateral policy that means from later this month Greek government bonds — along with other bonds guaranteed by Athens — will no longer be eligible for use in the bank’s auctions of cheap cash.