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Greece raises 1.138 bln euros in T-bill sales with higher cost

Xinhua, March 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

Greece managed to raise 1.138 billion euros (about 1.26 billion U.S. dollars) from a new auction of six-month treasury bills on Wednesday at higher cost, the Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA) announced.

The T-bills were priced to yield 2.97 percent, up from the 2.75 percent yield of the previous auction last month, while the bid-cover ratio remained stable at 1.3. It was the highest yield level since an issue in April 2014 with the yield of 3.01 percent.

Greece accepted non-competitive offers worth 263 million euros. The final settlement date for the T-bill auction is March 6.

Shut out of international markets from 2010, Greece runs a monthly Treasury bill sales program as the only source of funding to meet its financing needs.

The auction program was running in parallel to the rescue loans released from European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) creditors under the four-year bailout.

Under the Feb. 20 Eeurogroup deal to extend the loan agreement to June Greece was due to not receive any international aid at least until April.

Among Greece's financial needs in March is about 1.5 billion euros to the IMF. Analysts warned that Athens will face a credit event in case it fails to repay the loan to the IMF in late March.

The new leftist government led by SYRIZA party has asked the European Central Bank to lift the T-bill ceiling of 15 billion euros, which has already been hit by Greece. It has also asked the immediate payment of earnings by its euro zone partners from Greek bonds amounting to 1.9 billion euros.

Government sources said Greece will launch the next round of talks with international lenders by submitting proposals for six key reforms at the upcoming Eurogroup meeting on March 9.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis will present the list to his euro zone counterparts and discuss which ones could be implemented with no delays so that Greece could perhaps receive in return during March a part of the pending 7.2-billion-euro loan tranche from the four-year bailout program.

The Greek government assured that a solution will be found and Greece will meet all its financial obligations in coming weeks. Endit