Greece

Greece has blamed the International Monetary Fund for a significant delay to the completion of the country’s bailout review, The Wall Street Journal reported. “All institutions share the blame, but especially the IMF, are to blame for the continued uncertainty prevailing in Greece’s economy,” Franciscos Koutentakis, general secretary of fiscal policy, told reporters on Wednesday. “It seems that they want to see you being at the edge of a cliff, in order to start negotiating seriously,” he added. Mr.

Greece’s bailout negotiators are on the verge of leaving Athens without an agreement on a new set of economic reform measures, a move that would further delay politically sensitive debt relief talks and call into question the future of the €86bn rescue programme, the Financial Times reported. The threat to shut down talks until after next week’s Easter holidays came amid increasing acrimony between Greek leaders and the IMF, which is insisting on more concrete budget savings in order to sign off on the first quarterly review of the new bailout.

Two of Greece’s biggest lenders are being probed by the eurozone’s banking watchdog in connection with last year’s €14.4bn recapitalisation of the sector, which was as a condition of Greece’s latest international bailout, the Financial Times reported. Piraeus Bank, the country’s largest lender, and Attica Bank, its fifth-largest, are under scrutiny by the European Central Bank’s single supervisory mechanism in its first audit of Greek financial institutions since it was set up in 2013.

Greece’s international creditors narrowed their differences over the economic overhauls that Athens should implement in exchange for fresh loans, paving the way for a new round of negotiations which could lead to a much-anticipated deal on debt relief, The Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s bailout monitors agreed to send their teams back to Athens as soon as Tuesday, in a sign they were moving closer to each other’s positions on the type and scale of budget cuts and economic overhauls that Athens must undertake to meet the targets set out in its rescue program.

A new deadlock over Greece’s finances is complicating last year’s brittle bailout deal, just as the country nears a showdown with the rest of Europe over efforts that would keep migrants stuck within its borders, The Wall Street Journal reported. The struggle on two fronts risks overwhelming the fragile government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his ruling left-wing Syriza party, which barely managed to keep Greece in the euro last summer, even before the migration crisis deepened the strains between Greece and the rest of Europe.

Greece’s central bank chief called on Wednesday for a prompt conclusion to the country’s first bailout review, or put at risk a projected economic recovery for the second half of 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The projection for an economic recovery in the second half of the year is at the moment still subject to risks,” Bank of Greece’s Governor Yannis Stournaras told lawmakers during a parliamentary committee meeting. He said that 2016 can be the “beginning of a new path” for the country’s economy.

Alexis Tsipras has fended off attacks from Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s newly elected opposition leader, by insisting that his Syriza government can rescue the country’s underfunded pension system without cutting benefits to retirees, the Financial Times reported. The prime minister and his rival went head-to-head on Tuesday night in a heated parliamentary debate, their first confrontation since Mr Mitsotakis, a pro-European reformer, was voted in to lead the centre-right New Democracy party this month. “There will be no reductions in main pensions,” a defiant Mr Tsipras said.

The International Monetary Fund has reiterated its call for debt relief for Greece, raising pressure on European countries to cede to Greek demands for debt re-profiling, the Irish Times reported. In a statement released in Davos following a meeting between Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, the Washington-based fund said it was ready to support Greece but only if it was granted “significant” debt relief by its European partners.

Greece’s creditors are expected to start talking soon over an issue that has been looming over the eurozone since 2010: cutting the country’s mountainous debt burden, The Wall Street Journal reported. Greece already sliced its debts to private lenders through a bond swap in 2012. But that wasn’t enough. Now, most of its debt is owed to other eurozone governments, which have conceded Athens needs more relief.

Greece renewed its challenge to its creditors’ austerity demands on Tuesday, with a key minister in the government calling on Europe to let Greece meet its fiscal targets mainly via economic growth, not belt-tightening. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Greek Labor Minister George Katrougalos said the ruling left-wing Syriza party hasn’t given up its fight against austerity, despite a tactical retreat last year, when Greece signed up to deeper fiscal retrenchment under heavy pressure from creditors. “We may have not won a battle, but the war goes on,” said Mr.