BRUSSELS - Greece
won big breathing space Tuesday with long-frozen eurozone loans to
restart from December and a first clear admission that a chunk of the
country's debt burden will need to be written off down the line.
After
13 hours of talks in Brussels, the eurozone and the International
Monetary Fund agreed to unlock 43.7 billion euros (US$56 billion) in
loans and grant significant debt relief going forward for decades to
come.
Greece must still meet a series of agreed conditions but
"the decision will certainly reduce the uncertainty and strengthen
confidence in Europe and in Greece," said European Central Bank
President Mario Draghi, who left the talks before a final.
Starved
of bailout financing since the summer, Greek Prime Minister Antonis
Samaras hailed the deal in Athens, while German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble said the package would be presented to German
lawmakers by the end of the week.
"Everything has gone well," Samaras told reporters in Athens.
"All Greeks have fought (for this decision) and tomorrow is a new day for every Greek person," he added.
Finance
ministers, the IMF and the ECB said the money would be paid in four
instalments from December 13 through until the end of March, conditional
on Greece funneling income back to creditors at source and on the
implementation by Athens of tax reforms settled with creditors.
The
results of the "laborious" negotiations according to IMF head Christine
Lagarde are intended to see Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio fall from an
estimated 144 percent to 124 percent come 2020, and "substantially below
110 per cent" of gross domestic product by 2022.
"The IMF wanted
to make sure the euro partners would take the necessary actions to
bring Greece's debt on a sustainable path," said Lagarde. "I can say
today that it has been achieved."
There will be a mixture of techniques used to bring down Greece's debt burden.
These
will begin with a buyback by Greece of old debt that has fallen in
value on commercial money markets as well as national central banks
across the eurozone foregoing profits on holdings of Greek debt whose
worth has slumped.
Interest rates due to eurozone creditors will
also be trimmed or deferred -- Ireland and Portugal can now be expected
to demand parity -- while maturity dates will be pushed back by years.
The
original bailout rewrite agreed for Greece in March was meant to see
Greece's debt fall to 120 percent of gross domestic product by 2020.
"Greece has delivered, now it's delivery time for the Eurogroup and the IMF," said Rehn.
The
IMF is pushing for a so-called "haircut" or write-down of debt by
eurozone partner governments in the way banks wrote off most of the
loans due to them earlier this year, but Germany has come out against
this ahead of a general election next year.
Other Triple A-rated
states, though, have said they would "not exclude" the possibility of a
write-down of debt from 2015 onwards.
France has long been a firm
backer of all efforts to keep Greece in the eurozone club, and having
lost its Triple-A status, Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said: "Let's
assume our responsibilities."
Greece has been waiting since June
for a loan instalment of 31.2 billion euros (US$40 billion), part of a
130-billion-euro rescue granted earlier this year.
In exchange, Athens has pledged to implement a new series of radical austerity measures to cut its annual overspending.
Merkel hostile to "haircut"
Samaras' government pushed a fresh batch of deeply unpopular cuts through parliament earlier this month.
Greece's public creditors have decided to give Greece an extra two years, until 2016, to balance the books.
Greece's
private creditors have written off more than 100 billion euros in debt,
and the IMF has urged the ECB to accept this solution.
But both
the central bank and Germany have so far held out against making any
similar move, saying it would violate EU mandates against bankrolling
individual countries.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she is "against this debt write-off and I want to find another solution."
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