Eurogroup unlikely to take final decision on Greece on Monday

Eurozone finance ministers are unlikely to take a final decision to release the next tranche of emergency loans to Athens at a meeting on Monday as there is no clarity yet how to make Greece’s huge public debt sustainable, a senior EU official said.

“Is there an expectation of a final decision on Monday? There is a very, very high degree of probability of a second round of discussions to finalise everything,» the official said on Friday.

The official said eurozone ministers were aware that Greece needed money to redeem several billion euros worth of treasury bills maturing on Nov. 16 and were taking that into account in their discussions.

But he said the debt sustainability report by international lenders – the International monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, called the troika – was not ready yet and was necessary for a decision on unfreezing the programme.

“The debt sustainability analysis is an integral part of the compliance report of the troika and only once there is agreement that the evolution of debt to GDP ratio over a given time period is sustainable, then and only then can we say that we are prepared to disburse,» the official said.

Source: Reuters/Ekathimerini.com