Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attends a meeting at the Agriculture Ministry in central Athens, Greece, August 5, 2015.
Greece
and its international lenders reached a multi-billion euro bailout
agreement on Tuesday after talking through the night, officials said,
potentially saving the country from financial ruin.
The agreement, reached after a 23-hour session of talks, must still be adopted by Greece’s parliament and euro zone countries. The single currency bloc’s finance ministers are due to meet on Friday, giving time to finalize the deal before a major debt repayment next week.
The negotiations appeared to have resolved all the main outstanding issues, after Greece’s leftist government effectively capitulated last month to creditors’ demands for deep austerity measures in order to receive loans.
“Finally, we have white smoke,” a Greek Finance Ministry official said after exhausted Greek officials emerged in a central Athens hotel to announce the two sides had agreed on terms. “An agreement has been reached.”
Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos confirmed only “two or three small issues” were pending. Greek shares rose, with the banking index surging 6 percent, while two-year bond yields fell more than 4 percentage points.
“The institutions and the Greek authorities achieved an agreement in principle on a technical basis. Now as a next step, a political assessment will be made,” European commission spokeswoman Annika Breidhardt said in Brussels.
The agreement, reached after a 23-hour session of talks, must still be adopted by Greece’s parliament and euro zone countries. The single currency bloc’s finance ministers are due to meet on Friday, giving time to finalize the deal before a major debt repayment next week.
The negotiations appeared to have resolved all the main outstanding issues, after Greece’s leftist government effectively capitulated last month to creditors’ demands for deep austerity measures in order to receive loans.
“Finally, we have white smoke,” a Greek Finance Ministry official said after exhausted Greek officials emerged in a central Athens hotel to announce the two sides had agreed on terms. “An agreement has been reached.”
Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos confirmed only “two or three small issues” were pending. Greek shares rose, with the banking index surging 6 percent, while two-year bond yields fell more than 4 percentage points.
“The institutions and the Greek authorities achieved an agreement in principle on a technical basis. Now as a next step, a political assessment will be made,” European commission spokeswoman Annika Breidhardt said in Brussels.
No comments:
Post a Comment