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.

Greece has lived through eight lost years. Since 2010, its economy has shrunk by one-quarter, the disposable income of its citizens by-one third. More than 300,000 of those people have emigrated; among those left, unemployment is at 20 per cent. As the country prepares to draw a line under this grim period, with the international tutelage imposed after its bailout set formally to end on August 20, the question is whether the years of trauma will have acted as a purge — cleansing Greece of some of the problems that contributed to the crisis, the Financial Times reported.

A rescue fund set up to help euro-using countries paid its final 15 billion-euro ($17.3 billion) bailout loan to Greece on Monday after objections by Germany delayed the payment by several weeks, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The European Stability Mechanism said 9.5 billion euros (nearly $11 billion) of the loan would go toward a cash buffer Greece could use to meet its financial needs for almost two years. The other 5.5 billion euros ($6.4 billion) was earmarked for paying off some of the country's considerable debt.

The International Monetary Fund has warned eurozone governments that they need to give Greece more long-term debt relief to stop the country from being locked out of financial markets as Athens prepares for life outside a bailout programme, the Financial Times reported. In a swipe at EU capitals that have pushed back at Greek demands for greater debt relief, the IMF has calculated that Greece’s long-term debt costs will be unsustainable in 20 years’ time because of the high budget surplus targets demanded by European creditors as part of Athens’ post-bailout conditions.  Wit

Greece is planning a return to the markets in a bid to regain its status as a “normal” country. If the government can announce by the end of the year its program for tapping the markets in 2019, and repeat this exercise each year for the following 12 months, the plan will have worked, an official familiar with the matter said. After losing more than a quarter of its economic output during the past decade, Europe’s most indebted country is now trying to stand on its own feet again, Bloomberg News reported.

Greece is scheduled to exit its marathon bailout this summer after hitting the tough fiscal targets set by its creditors. But the country has done so by raising taxes so high that they are strangling the small businesses that form the backbone of its economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. At the Dandy restaurant in downtown Athens, owner Charalampos Bonatsos said rising taxes have forced him to lay off half his staff and cut his remaining workers’ wages. He said he still struggles to cope with the last three years’ increases in corporate income tax, property tax and sales tax.