On Monday the Greek government has handed over the €580m due to the International Monetary Fund. That means Greece has cleared most of the money owed to the IMF in March, but still faces another €350m bill on Friday.
These IMF repayments are exhausing the country's cash reserves, raising the pressure on Greece to satisfy its creditors and unlock fresh bailout funds.
Having produced little progress last week, the talks between Greek officials and those of its creditors restarted today. Athens will be hoping that discussions can advance next week because the government is running short of money.
It is hoping for either an early disbursement of some of the 7.2
billion euros in remaining bailout loans or an increase in the
15-billion-euro limit on T-bills that the state can issue.
While tensions between Greece and Germany, Greece's biggest contributor to Greece’s 240 billion-euro twin bailouts, are escalating, Germany's high officials claim they still want Greece to stay in the euro area.
As The Guardian has just reported, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert has told that Angela Merkel and the finance ministry have a “shared goal” of keeping Greece in the eurozone.
Lately, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has been locked in a war of words with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble.
