President Nicos Anastasiadies boarded on a plane Sunday morning and moved to Brussels with a big Cypriot delegation for the fine tuning of the bailout agreement with the Troika. The meetings in Brussels include also a face-to-face negotiation with IMF head Christine Lagarde. Later he will meet with EU presidents Barroso and van Rompuy. Even though Cyprus coalition government voted bills to save the country’s economy, the threat of financial meltdown has not been averted yet.
Anastasiades and his team have a “very difficult task to accomplish to save the Cypriot economy and avert a disorderly default if there is no final agreement on a loan accord,” a government spokesman said Sunday. (Reuters)
On Saturday, feverish negotiations between the government and the IMF representatives took place, with local media reporting of unprecedented pressure from the IMF’s side that allegedly put on the table new demands every half-an-hour.
Cypriot sources claimed the IMF doe snot want a solution.
The government offered a bank deposits levy of 20% for bank deposits more than 100,000 euro on Bank of Cyprus and a 4% levy for deposits (above 100,000 euro) in all other banks. Depositors will be offered bank shares as compensation. Deposits below 100K would be excempted from the levy.
IMF: split Bank fo Cyprus
The IMF is said to demand also the splitting of Bank of Cyprus in “good” and “bad” bank.
The Bank of Cyprus and the government refused to accept this request, as the Bank of Cyprus would have to pay back the amount of EUR 9.5 billion the Popular Bank took from the European Central Bank.
A bank source told Athens News Agency that there is a bank (Popular Bank), which is “clinically dead” and a bank (Bank of Cyprus), which “is the ventilator.”
Greek ANT1 TV reported Sunday noon that splitting BOC in good and bad bank would skyrocket the deposits “haircut” up to 35 percent.
The final decision will be taken tonight at 7 p.m. at the extraordinary meeting of the finance ministers of Euro zone, the Eurogroup.
Banks on Cyprus have been closed since one week, they are expected to open again on Tuesday, 26. March 2013.
PS The “heroic NO” the Cypriot opposition said to EU and the IMF last week didn’t help much…
(ekathimerini)
Who is the ONLY elected representtive in this bunch? The Cypriot President.
As the others are neither elected by anybody nor accountable to anybody, what gives them the right to lay down the law and impose their “rules” on anybody?