WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) – International Monetary Fund
talks with Greece are focused on getting the current bailout
program back on track, an IMF spokesman said on Thursday, when
asked about the possibility of a third bailout program.
“We’re talking about getting the current program back on
track,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters at a regularly
scheduled briefing.
Rice was being asked about a Dow Jones story quoting an IMF
official who said Greece will need a third bailout package from
the euro zone in order to avoid default.
“Greece will require additional financing, which may take
the form either of Official Sector Involvement or of additional
loans, hopefully on more favorable terms,” Thanos Catsambas, an
alternate executive director, who represents Greece at the IMF’s
board, said in an interview on Thursday.
Rice said he hadn’t seen the story.
But “in any program, we’re looking for two things: debt
sustainability and financing assurance. The discussions in
Athens going on right now are focused on how we can get there,”
Rice said, adding it would be inappropriate to speculate beyond
that.
Senior EU officials told Reuters as long ago as July that
Greece would not be able to pay what it owes and further debt
restructuring was likely to be necessary.
A number of euro zone officials said European policymakers
were working on “last chance” options to bring Greece’s debts
down and keep it in the euro zone, with the ECB and national
central banks looking at taking significant losses on the value
of their bond holdings – so-called official sector involvement.
Inspectors from the troika of European Commission, European
Central Bank and International Monetary Fund lenders are in
Athens on a visit that will determine whether the country gets
crucial further aid under its latest bailout program.
