Greece

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.

Greece has a chequered history when it comes to repaying debt. Defaults span the 19th and 20th centuries, peaking with last year’s shock failure to pay back the International Monetary Fund on time, the Financial Times reported. But don’t imagine that the country’s debt market has been lying dormant in the midst of these troubles. Throughout the current crisis, Athens has been doing a brisk trade in short-term Treasury bills and on Tuesday the country held a successful auction that raised €1.63bn. The reasons investors rarely hear about these regular debt sales are twofold.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said his government “will not succumb to unreasonable demands” as it prepares to send the country’s creditors proposals on crucial reforms to the pension system this week, the Financial Times reported. “The creditors have to know that we are going to respect the agreement,” Mr Tsipras said in an interview with Real News newspaper on Sunday, referring to reforms demanded in exchange for Greece’s €86bn bailout agreement last year. However, he pledged that Greece “won’t succumb to unreasonable and unfair demands” for more pension cuts.

National Bank of Greece said yesterday that it had agreed to sell a majority stake in Finansbank of Turkey to Qatar National Bank for 2.75 billion euros, or about $3 billion, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. The Greek bank began exploring “strategic options” for its Turkish business last year after the European Central Bank identified a capital shortfall at National Bank of Greece and at other Greek lenders.

Greece’s leftist-led government on Monday signed its first major privatization deal, granting a German company the right to lease and manage more than a dozen regional airports, the International New York Times reported. The contract, worth 1.2 billion euros, or $1.3 billion, is part of an effort to privatize state assets and adopt economic changes demanded by international creditors under Greece’s €86 billion bailout program. Some other measures are under debate in the Greek Parliament and are scheduled for a vote Tuesday night.

Greece and its international creditors reached a deal on Friday on a new set of economic overhauls the government must implement to receive the next slice of €1 billion ($1.1 billion) in financial aid, The Wall Street Journal reported. “We have reached a deal on this round,” Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis told reporters after the latest round of negotiations. The list of reforms includes overhauls to the country’s banking sector, the design of a privatization fund and the partial privatization of the country’s power grid operator, ADMIE.

In theory, the outlook for Greece is better than anyone dared hope just a few months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported. Despite the trauma of the standoff between Athens and its creditors in the first half of the year, which culminated in the imposition of capital controls and the government’s 11th-hour acceptance of a new bailout, it now looks as though the economy will have flatlined in 2015, defying recent predictions of a 2.3% slump. Athens forecasts that the economy will shrink by just 0.7% next year and that growth will return in the second half of the year.

Greece’s parliament early Sunday approved the country’s 2016 budget, which projects a flat-lining economy for 2015 and a mild contraction for the next year but foresees billions in fresh austerity measures, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a vote after a five-day debate in Greece’s 300-seat parliament, the budget--which traditionally is seen as a vote of confidence--was supported by the 153 lawmakers of the coalition government. The budget is the first to be put before parliament by the Syriza-led government, which won national elections in January and again in September.

Workers across Greece walked off their jobs on Thursday, heeding a call by labor unions to join the second general strike in three weeks to protest a new round of austerity measures, the International New York Times reported. The 24-hour walkout shut down public services, disrupted public transportation, left ferries moored in ports, closed schools and forced hospitals to function with reduced staffs.