Financial Times: "Creditors to begin debt relief talks with Greece"

The British financial newspaper “Financial Times” published an article with the title “Creditors to begin debt relief talks with Greece”.

As noted in the relevant article, although Greek government had been relying heavily on  achieving the primary surplus to begin new talks on debt relief, European officials have indicated that these talks will not consider a possible writing off the total debt, as some IMF officials were advocating the previous period.

Most Greek debt is held by international lenders which means that further debt “haircut” will result in direct losses for the European governments.

According to the article, a Greek official is expected to raise the issue of debt restructuring at the Euro Working Group meeting on Thursday. “Now that Eurostat has officially confirmed our figures on the size of the primary surplus, the government will ask for the eurozone to go ahead with a debt restructuring as agreed by the euro group in November 2012,” he said.

“The Greeks are now claiming a surplus but the Eurostat numbers show a deficit, which could make the subsequent discussion on debt relief much more toxic.” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy.