ATHENS, April 23 – Greece expects to receive before May 19 the first tranche of funds under a 45 billion euro ($60.49 billion) EU/IMF aid package it has formally requested, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said on Friday.
“We expect to have funds from the mechanism before May 19,” Papaconstantinou told reporters.
Greece asked on Friday to trigger billions of euros in emergency loans from a bailout package which could be the largest multilateral rescue of a country ever attempted
The request came after months of markets pushing Greek borrowing costs ever higher, undermining the country’s efforts to cut its 300 billion euro debt load.
“The need to have the mechanism activated emerged after developments in the last days, particularly the deficit revision by the EU and the downgrade (by Moody’s),” the minister said.
“The request for aid removes uncertainty in the markets that Greece will not have funding,” he said.
Greece has covered its funding needs for this month, albeit at a high cost and needs to borrow less than 10 billion euros to cover next month when an 8.5 billion euro government bond comes due.
“Greece will go out to borrow from markets when conditions are appropriate,” said Papaconstantinou, who will meet with IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Washington this weekend.
He reiterated that Greece would not be restructuring its debt.
“There is no such issue, I say it categorically, it was not discussed in the meetings we had (with EU and IMF officials).”
