ATHENS: Greece shares rose, as investors welcomed a move over the weekend by Athens’ government to calm concerns that the country might default on a loan. Greece’s benchmark Athex General Composite Share Index (ATG) rose 1.6 percent while the Greece banking index advanced 2.6 percent.
Earlier Greece Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said that Greece “intends to meet all obligations to all its creditors, ad infinitum,” seeking to quell default fears ahead of a big loan payment Athens owes the IMF later this week. Greece has not received bailout funds since August last year and has resorted to measures such as borrowing from state entities to tide it over. It offered a new package of reforms last week in the hope of unlocking funds, but has yet to win agreement on the proposals with its EU and IMF lenders.
Athens is also on the hook for a roughly 450 million euro ($492 million) loan repayment to the IMF due this Thursday.
