Greece beats deadline for €750m loan repayment to IMF
Some expected Greece to default on it's latest debt repayment, but it has proved them wrong.
Today, following extensive discussions with creditor nations on the struggling economy's future in the Eurozone, a transfer of €750m (£544m) was made from Greece to the IMF, beating tomorrow's deadline for the payment.
It is not clear how Greece managed to gather the funds, but it has been asking public bodies to put their cash reserves into the central bank. Additionally, the mayor of the Greek city Thessolaniki made it known last week that he had handed over large sums.
To save it from bankruptcy, Greece is trying to unlock the final €7.2bn tranche from its EU/IMF bailout fund. It has until the end of June to reach an agreement with its creditors, BUT talks have made worryingly little progress so far.
The left-wing Syriza party came to power based on promises to bring Greece out of austerity and renegotiate its terms of loan repayments, and has set out some “red lines” it won't budge on in negotiations.
Over the next three months, Greece has over €20bn worth of debts to repay, in the form of IMF loans, T-bills and government bonds.