A confidential document has been leaked by the Financial Times that reveals the IMF will not bailout Greece, as previously anticipated.
The four-page document says that that IMF will “participate in policy discussions” to ensure the bailout deal is “consistent with what the Fund has in mind“, but it “cannot reach staff level agreement at this stage“.
BYPASS THE CENSORS
Sign up to get unfiltered news delivered straight to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe any time. By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use
Businessinsider.com reports:
An IMF official subsequently confirmed to Reuters that, “The IMF can only support a program that is comprehensive,” meaning the IMF can’t give Greece more money until it know it will be able to pay it back.
The involvement of the IMF in the deal is crucial for some European countries, especially Germany.
Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, actually proposed a temporary Grexit (Greek exit) from the eurozone earlier in July, indicating just how little Europe’s largest economy wants to be involved in another financial-aid package.
It’s not the money that’s the issue for other European countries — as a country of 11 million people, Greece’s bailout won’t break the bank. The involvement of the international creditor is more to do with keeping the veneer of respectability about the programme, so that it keeps strict conditions and doesn’t veer into a giveaway from Europe’s richer countries.
It’s something of an irony that the IMF seems to have decided that it can’t be involved for the opposite reason, effectively saying that there’s not enough relief on debt coming from the European side to make the country’s finances sustainable, even if it did bring in the sort of extremely optimistic structural reforms that it’s signing up to.
An update from the IMF early in July already boosted Greece’s debt from “highly vulnerable” to unsustainable.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
Be the first to comment