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Greek FinMin criticizes IMF, Berlin for delay in bailout review

Xinhua, February 19, 2017 Adjust font size:

Ahead of Monday's Eurogroup meeting, Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos has criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble for delaying conclusion of the second review of the Greek bailout.

"How could we move forward with such a stance by the IMF and with Schaeuble acting like a sphinx regarding debt relief?" Tsakalotos said in an interview with the Greek daily Editors' Journal published on Sunday.

The review has been beset by delays and disputes between Greece and its European Union and IMF lenders.

Under the initial timetable agreed when Athens and its international lenders sealed the third Greek bailout in the summer of 2015, the second review should have been completed in February 2016.

European lenders were expecting the IMF to contribute 5 billion euros (5.3 billion U.S. dollars) after first having hoped for 16 billion euros (17 billion U.S. dollars).

Germany opposes debt relief for Greece as demanded by the IMF, which insists that Greece's current debt load is unsustainable and requests imminent debt relief.

Earlier, the IMF believed Greece can only meet a primary fiscal surplus target of 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product by 2018, but now had adopted the view of European lenders that Greece should post a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent in order to get fresh aid.

Amid this climate, Greek officials hope for a "political solution" during Monday's Eurogroup meeting so that technical teams can return to Athens in coming days to finalize the staff level agreement.

"I believe that on February 20 there will be an agreement on the framework and technical experts will come to Greece to work on the details," Panagiotis Roumeliotis, chairman of Greek Attica bank and former representative of Greece at the IMF in 2010 and 2011, told Greek national news agency AMNA.

Roumeliotis also claimed that the IMF made "major mistakes" in the first Greek bailout by giving wrong estimates on the course of the ailing economy which increased the country's financing needs.

In order to avoid repeating the same mistakes, the Fund now insists on debt relief, he said. Endi