Greece Admits It Will Not Make IMF Payment On Friday, No Deal Expected Wednesday
For days, Greek officials have been insistent that the country will make a €300 million payment to the IMF this Friday and thus avoid a default.
Last month, we heard the same rhetoric out of Athens and as it turns out, the government had prearranged an end-around whereby Greece tapped its IMF SDR reserves to stay current. In other words, the IMF paid itself. We suspected that some similar arrangement might be in the offing this month when economy minister George Stathakis said bundling June’s payments would not be necessary because Greece was looking at a “technical solution” to make the June 5 payment.
On Tuesday evening we noted that some Greek officials seemed to be suggesting that the “technical solution” was simply a veiled reference to securing a deal that would allow the country to use a portion of its aid disbursement to pay the Fund at the end of the week. That now appears to have been confirmed with a Syriza spokesman saying that if Tsipras does not ink a deal in the next 48 hours, Greece will miss Friday’s payment.
Via Reuters:
Greece will not make a June 5 repayment to the International Monetary Fund if there is no prospect of an aid-for-reforms deal with its international creditors soon, the spokesman for the ruling Syriza party’s lawmakers said on Wednesday.
The payment of 300 million euros ($335 million) is the first of four this month totaling 1.6 billion euros from a country that depends on foreign aid to stay afloat.
Greece owes a total of about 320 billion euros, of which about 65 percent to euro zone governments and the IMF, and about 8.7 percent to the European Central Bank.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
