Economy minister says Greece rescued, gives details of new proposal - BBC; Euro surges
Greece's economy minister Giorgos Stathakis said in an interview with BBC that he believes that the country's new proposals have broken the impasse with its creditors.
Euro surged against the dollar.
The minister expects eurozone government officials to issue a communique later today that
will say there is now a basis for a formal agreement with Athens to
complete the current bailout programme and release €7.2bn of vital
funds.
The euro rose against the dollar with EUR/USD adding 41% to trade at 1.400.
Stathakis detailed Greece's new money-raising proposals. These include:
1) A new tax on businesses
2) A new tax on the wealthy
3) Some increases in the VAT rate on selected items.
Although technical work which is necessary to formalise the agreement will take some time in the upcoming days, he was hopeful that Greece would be able to make its €1.5bn payment to the IMF on its due date of June 30 - and therefore avoid defaulting.
However, Greece's ruling Syriza party avoids crossing red lines, thus no further reductions in pensions or public-sector wages will be made, and there will be no increased VAT on electricity.
Stathakis also said that the authorities had agreed with the IMF and eurozone governments that the budget surplus would be targeted at 1% of GDP or national income in 2015, 2% in 2016 and 3% in 2017.
Greece's massive burden of debt will not be reduced, despite Syriza's earlier insistence on this, however, the debt relief will be on the agenda for talks in the coming months.
In general, the Minister thinks that Tsipras has done sufficiently not to allow the European Central Bank to end its emergency support for the Greek banking system.
