Cyprus talks with lenders as debt sustainability in focus
Cyprus launched a last-ditch bid with potential lenders on Friday to get financial aid needed before coffers in the tiny eurozone economy start running dry.
Battered by its exposure to debt-crippled Greece, Cyprus sought a full bailout from the EU and the IMF in June to buffer its banks and plug widening deficits after attempts to secure a credit line from Russia failed.
The government has said it could have difficulties paying salaries in December. It is currently heavily reliant on short-term financing from domestic banks.
Economists from the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, known as the «troika», arrived for talks at the finance ministry on Friday morning. They did not speak to journalists.
The size of the potential bailout — speculated to be anything between 11 and 16 billion euros and the bulk of it for banks — will be huge in proportion to the 17.9 billion euro economy, the third smallest in the euro zone.
Debate on how Cyprus will manage to pay it back will feature prominently in discussions. Cyprus says it wants the eurozone’s ESM bailout fund to recapitalise the banks directly, but heavyweights in the bloc disagree with the ESM undertaking legacy debt.
“Economically the biggest challenge of these talks will be how to get a deal which make the debt sustainable,» said economist Fiona Mullen at Sapienta Economics.
The IMF, which announced its participation in the mission on Wednesday, hinted as much: It said it wanted a ‘financing solution consistent with debt sustainability’.
Cyprus is already staring at a public debt which catapulted from 71 percent of GDP in 2011 to about 90 percent this year after coming to the aid of its second largest bank, Popular.
Lenders want savings of almost one billion euros per year, privatisations, wage cuts in a public sector which is one of the most highly paid in Europe, a culling of wage indexation and the creation of a «bad bank» to park soured assets.
Cyprus says it will not privatise «profitable» state enterprises and its leftist President Demetris Christofias says he is prepared to take to the streets to defend wage indexation.
Friday’s talks were open ended, but it was unlikely that a deal was imminent, a senior Cypriot official said on condition of anonymity.
[Reuters]
