Greece

Greece inched closer to a return to public market finance for at least part of its Sisyphean debt burden this week, with benchmark bond yields dropping to levels seen when the country last issued new debt three years ago, the Financial Times reported. Enthusiasm for the small portion of Greek debt held in private hands and available to trade followed a long-delayed agreement on fiscal and structural reform measures with European creditors this month, paving the way towards debt relief talks.

The yield on Greece’s most traded 10-year bond has hit its lowest since the country underwent a private sector bond restructuring nearly five years ago as investors bet Athens’ latest bailout breakthrough can finally pave the way for the start of its economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. Greece’s benchmark yield, a barometer for the markets’ take on the state of the country after nearly €350bn of bailouts, has slipped five basis points (0.05 percentage points) to a fresh low of 5.49 per cent today.

Greece has wrapped up a deal with creditors on details of reforms to unlock the next disbursement from its €86bn bailout programme, the Financial Times reported. The deal covers a wide range of fiscal and structural measures, from fresh cuts in pensions to liberalising Sunday trading. It cheered markets and potentially opens the door to talks on debt relief for Greece. Pierre Moscovici, the EU economics commissioner, suggested on Tuesday that progress was possible, saying the time had come to turn the page on “this long and difficult austerity chapter” for Greeks.

The European Union's head office says Greece is delivering on its fiscal targets and that an agreement to hand more bailout cash to Athens could come next month, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. EU Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said Wednesday that Greece continues to show progress on its budget targets and held out hope of an agreement between Greece and its bailout creditors from the 19-country eurozone and the International Monetary Fund soon.

As the International Monetary Fund approaches the seventh anniversary of the contentious Greek bailout, it is torn over whether to commit new loans to a nearly bankrupt Greece, the International New York Times reported. For more than a year, I.M.F. officials have been saying — loudly — that they cannot participate in a new rescue package for Greece unless Europe agrees to ease Greece’s onerous debt burden. The fund’s reluctance to commit additional money to Greece also highlights a widely held view among I.M.F.

Greece achieved a 2016 primary surplus almost seven times higher than its bailout target, but the International Monetary Fund is skeptical the country can sustain that performance, Bloomberg News reported. The Hellenic Statistical Authority is set on Friday to unveil data on last year’s primary surplus, which Eurostat is expected to validate on Monday. The surplus will be close to 4 percent of gross domestic product, according to a finance ministry official who asked not to be identified in line with policy. The bailout target was for a primary surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP.

Greece and its creditors say they’ve made progress in their endless negotiations over the country’s debts -- enough to avoid a default on payments worth more than 7 billion euros in July, a Bloomberg View reported. That’s good, but it was the easy part. The definitive settlement that Greece and the European Union both need still isn’t in sight. For the past seven years, the International Monetary Fund and euro-zone institutions have supported Athens with loans in exchange for fiscal austerity and structural economic reform.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said on Wednesday Greece was heading in the right direction on reforms, but talks on its bailout review and the IMF's potential role in it were "only halfway through". Last week, euro zone finance ministers agreed on the key elements of reforms that Greece needs to implement in exchange for a new loan under its 86 billion-euro bailout programme, the third since 2010, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

The agreement reached by the eurozone finance ministers in Malta last week on the tax and pension measures to be enacted this year that will take effect in future years comes as a huge relief; without it, Greece won’t receive the next tranche of its €86bn bailout and won’t be able to repay €6bn of debt that comes due in July, a Financial Times letter reported. But you are also right that there remains a huge division between the country’s creditors that must be bridged.

Greece has reached a deal on economic reforms with the monitors of its €86bn bailout, paving the way for the country to keep getting money from the programme, the Financial Times reported. The agreement centres on tax and pension reforms that Athens must pass into law now, to be implemented in 2019 and 2020. The accord was hailed by euro area finance ministers, meeting in Malta, as a major breakthrough after months of gridlock over the next stages of Greece’s aid programme.