Brussels, 11/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has again said that writing off some of Greece's debt is not one of the options available to the eurozone for reducing the Greek debt burden if Athens achieves a budget surplus in 2013, not including the cost of servicing the debt.
On the fringes of a G20 Finance summit in Washington on Thursday, Euro Commissioner Olli Rehn made it clear that he opposes a writedown on bonds, most of which are now in the hands of public investors: “We've already had two rounds of private sector involvement concerning Greece and personally I do not see that haircuts are either something we should aim for or would be reasonable.” He said that interest rates could be reduced or the maturity of the loans to Greece extended.
Attending the summit in Washington, Klaus Regling, EFSF managing director, talked about the increasing plausibility of new aid for Greece in 2014. He said he expected the country to be unable to raise funding from the money markets itself until the end of the current programme.
On Friday, the Greek privatisation fund announced that it has concluded the privatisation of Greek lottery company (OPAP). A third party has bought a third of the company's shares for over €650 million. (EL/transl.fl)