The International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not want to offer Greece further aid, according to senior European Union diplomats, Germany's Spiegel news magazine reported Sunday. Greece's donors - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF - have been assessing whether the debt-ridden country is meeting its reform obligations.
The so-called troika is to return to Athens on Tuesday. Greece hopes to receive further loans worth 12.5 billion euros (15.2 billion dollars) in August and September. However one unnamed EU diplomat rejected the Spiegel report, saying that as part of the troika, the IMF would not want to preempt its conclusions.
"That can't be true because the IMF is also awaiting the troika report before making a decision. So at the moment there is still a lot of 'if' and 'but' involved, so pure speculation."
The EU and IMF have offered a 173-billion-euro bailout over the course of 3 years, in return for economic reforms and deficit-cutting measures. But during their last visit to Athens which ended July 9, the international donors said Greece had missed its austerity targets and must speed up the reform process.
Greece's coalition government came into office in June with the goal of renegotiating the dates by which it must slash its spending, aiming to extend a 2013/2014 timeframe for 11.5 billion euros of cuts to the years 2015/2016.
Greece's donors have calculated that they would have to pledge an extra 10 to 50 billion euros in aid if the country were granted more time to reach its savings target, Spiegel reported.
Many eurozone governments are no longer prepared to support further aid for Greece. The Netherlands and Finland both recently made any further aid contingent on IMF involvement.
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