PM Samaras: 'We don't need more money, we have no fiscal gap

13:53 22/4/2014 - Πηγή: Matrix24

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said he expected Greek bond yields to decline further, according to an interview with Bloomberg, while he signaled he had no immediate plans to sell more debt.

“We anticipate bonds and T-bills’ interest rates to decline and further enhancement of liquidity through investments and privatizations,” Samaras said in an interview in Athens

last week, a few days after the first Greek bond sale in four years.

According to the report, Samaras said economic indicators show that Greece can stand on its own feet, without further assistance from euro-area partners and the International Monetary Fund. “We don’t need more money. We have no fiscal gap, we have no financing gap and, on top of this, we have the ability to go to the markets if necessary.”

“We reached rock bottom and now we can only go up and we will only go up,” he said.

Samaras said Greece was in no rush to tap the markets again, the report noted. “In the future, we will ask for the money we want, at a lower rate,” he said.

Samaras counts on Greece’s euro-are partners “keeping their part of the deal” made in 2012, to provide further debt relief to his country, once it achieves a budget surplus before debt-servicing payments, the report pointed out.

“If Greece meets the targets, which it has already, the lenders will provide additional debt relief; this was a decision, which was taken in November 2012,” Samaras said. “We did our part of the job, we expect them to do theirs,” he added, while he declined to comment on what kind of debt relief Greece is asking for.

While unemployment just shy of 27 percent is still the highest in Europe and the economy is mired in deflation, Samaras said that companies such as Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. and Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) are starting to invest in Greece, indicating that Europe’s most indebted nation is turning the corner.

“Every day, more and more are coming: for instance Hewlett Packard, IBM, Huawei and ZTE. Also, over 600 hectares of urban land will be developed in the old Athens airport, by Greek and non-Greek investors, a 7- to 8 billion-euros investment in the next few years,” Samaras said.

source: ΑΜΝΑ