Tsipras tells MPs debt relief discussion to follow bailout review
Discussions on the long-term sustainability of Greece’s debt are expected to start after the conclusion of a review of reforms by its lenders, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Wednesday.
Tsipras told lawmakers of his leftist Syriza party that discussions with lenders were progressing well. The government has previously said that talks with lenders on the bailout review would be concluded by January.
“Immediately after the conclusion of the third review a discussion is expected to start on the long-term viability of debt, and (Greece will) enter the final stretch for emerging from the bailout,” he told parliamentarians.
A cash-for-reforms bailout program worth up to 86 billion euros is expected to expire in August 2018.
A third review, or round of discussions with creditors on the pace of reforms, launched in October, were being held in an “unusually good climate”, Tsipras said.
Debt relief has become a rallying cry of Tsipras’s administration since he swept to power in 2015, promising to do away with austerity only to agree to a new bailout that year to avert bankruptcy and ejection from the euro zone.
The country has received three international bailouts since 2010 and its debt now stands at 177 percent of economic output.
Euro zone governments have promised to consider debt relief for the nation after its bailout expires and only if needed, and have not made any further commitments.
The euro zone would consider it around August 2018, on the basis of debt sustainability analysis at the time, Klaus Regling, head of the euro zone bailout fund ESM, told Reuters on November 2
[Reuters]
