Greece will continue paying its debts as long as it is able to, the government said Monday, a day after its ruling leftist coalition narrowly rejected a call by party hardliners to miss its next International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan payment.
Syriza's central committee also rejected calls to nationalise banks and hold a referendum that would give voters the power to reject any deal made in Brussels with the EU or IMF for debt relief in exchange for more fiscal reforms.
"To the extent that we are able to pay, we will keep on repaying these obligations," government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis said Monday.
"It is the government's responsibility to be able to repay all these obligations," he said, but added: "It is also the responsibility of the creditors to be faithful to [their] loan obligations."
The country's EU and IMF creditors have demanded fiscal reforms and withheld the release of the country's remaining bailout funds until certain obligations are met.
No money
Sakellaridis's remarks came a day after the interior minister said Greece did not have the money to make a series of repayments to the IMF starting on June 5.
"The installments for the IMF in June are €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion). This money will not be given – there isn't any to be given. This is a known fact," Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis said on Sunday.
Greece's radical leftist government has been locked in negotiations with its troika of creditors – the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank – for the past four months in a bid to unlock some €7.2 billion in bailout cash.
The Syriza-led government, which was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform, has so far refused to agree to key economic reforms that the troika wants in exchange for the rescue funds.
But with a punishing debt repayment schedule over the next three months, Greece now desperately needs those funds.
Last week, the parliamentary spokesman for Syriza said that the government would not be able to honour its repayments to the IMF as its priority was to pay salaries, pensions and running costs.
"No country can repay its debts with only the money from its budget," Nikos Filis told Ant1 television.
0 التعليقات:
إرسال تعليق