Greek FinMin urges Germany & other creditors for a quick deal on Debt Relief

Greek Finance Minister, Euclid Tsakalotos urges Germany and other creditors to quickly on the debt relief and warnes that failure to act would threaten Greece’s  hopes of recovery

In an interview to Wall Street Journal, Tsakalotos warned the country’s creditors  to agree on a debt restructuring in coming weeks, or miss the best chance to bring the country’s seven-year crisis to an end.

The Greek Finance Minister warned that procrastination could undermine the country’s hopes of recovery in 2017, and that the coming weeks offer an important opportunity for the eurozone to show it can fix, rather than avoid, its problems.

“If we kick the can down the road and say ‘we will decide in two years’” about how to make Greece’s debt sustainable, then investors will also postpone decisions about investing in Greece, said Mr. Tsakalotos, a leading figure in Greece’s ruling left-wing Syriza party.

Amid rising political populism in Europe, the eurozone will only survive if it persuades voters it can solve its long-festering challenges, Mr. Tsakalotos said. “If it just postpones political decisions…then people will say it’s not working.”

Urgent action is vital, he argued. No debt-relief agreement in December or January would mean no inclusion in the ECB’s program by March, Mr. Tsakalotos said. And that would prevent the country from returning to bond markets later in 2017 or early 2018. “It would be very short-sighted to stop the process that would bring us out of the program, which is within reach,” he said. (full interview in WSJ)

Tsakalotos’s comments to WSJ, came a day after U.S. President Barack Obama visited Athens, where he backed calls for Greek debt relief, before heading for Germany.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaueble has repeatedly rejected talks on Greek debt relief for the time being, saying the issue can be addressed after the current bailout program concludes in 2018.

At a joint press conference Thursday afternoon, neither US President Barack Obama nor German Chancellor Angela Merkel wasted a single word on the Greek debt relief.