ATHENS: The first tranche of Greece’s new bailout programme — the third in five years — was disbursed on Thursday on time allowing Athens to repay its maturing debts to its international creditors, the finance ministry announced.
The announcement came as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was holding a meeting with his close aides and advisors to examine the prospect of calling snap general elections in later this year, government sources said.
Following the ratification of the new 86 billion euros ($96 billion), three-year bailout by the European Support Mechanism (ESM) on Wednesday evening, the first loan installment of 26 billion euros was paid out, Xinhua reported citing Greek news agency AMNA.
About 13 billion euros was allocated to a special account at the Bank of Greece to automatically repay a 3.4-billion euro debt to the European Central Bank (ECB) due on Thursday, a 2.2 billion euro debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the rest to pay off the 7 billion euro bridging loan ESM granted to the country in July.
Furthermore, 10 billion euros in the form of European Financial Stability Facility bonds will be used to recapitalise Greek banks, while one billion euros will be used for the payment of overdue obligations of the Greek government to the private sector.
