The great bazaar for the new memorandum

The government is negotiating with the lenders in the country for a "New memorandum" with longer maturity, lower interest rates and new types of safeguards.

The Finance minister G. Papakonstantinou is leaving Athens today and will accompany the PM in Berlin and Helsinki for the great bazaar in view of the summits in March for the new support mechanism (EFSF).

Germany and Finland are countries that will be called upon to finance the Fund, while Greece is placing its hopes on it for the extension of the 110bil loan, but also to secure new loans needed to buy back part of the debt.

But as protothema.gr revealed last week, the following come into play:

    * Renegotiation of memorandum debt terms or
    * Refunding of old and new loans
    * With new loans from the Support Mechanism or the European Investment Bank

    * With lower rate and longer duration
    * In exchange of the 50bil euro privatisations

The Greek government will attempt to persuade that:

    * The 5% rate is high and the repayment period short, even though it was justified by the 2010 conditions but
    * Now there is a list of privatisations to secure the sustainability of the public debt and the debtors of our country
    * The conditions have improved, there isn’t such great danger and uncertainty about the course of our country so
    * The loan interest rates towards it can decrease or refinance old loans with new and cheaper ones
    * It is an opportunity for the companies and investors that are lending money to us to take part in the share of the 50bil to secure places in the Greek market, so the Greek economy will draw capital and the foreign investors will develop more trust too.

However, the PM and the minister of Finance will attempt to resist Merkel’s pressures and those of her allies in the EU for stricter austerity measures, presenting the argument that Greece has already adopted most of the measures that will be included in the forthcoming «Competitiveness Agreement» that Germany wants to enforce in Europe.

This way facilitates the German side too, which wants to promote the Competitiveness Agreement drawn up jointly with France, which relies mainly on the commitment to establish a «debt brake» in the constitutions of all Member States but increases the retirement age, too.