LISBON: The chairman of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem said this week in Brussels that the forum of Euro Zone finance ministers did not discuss and is not going to discuss any renegotiation of Portuguese debt interest, adding that there was a “great difference” in comparison with Greece.
Asked whether the Portuguese Finance Minister Mário Centeno had raised the question on Monday in Brussels, after having done so in parliament last week, the Eurogroup chairman said, “no, (and if he had), it would not help an already difficult process of the sustainability of the Greek debt”.
Last week in a debate in parliament about the 2017 budget, Minister Centeno acknowledged that “Portugal has to have a reduction in the interest rate it pays for its debts”. At a press conference at the end of the Eurogroup, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, Klaus Regling, corroborated Dijsselbloem’s idea, saying the cases of Portugal and Greece are quite different, explaining that the yields on 10-year bonds on the secondary market, in the case of Portugal are round about 3.5 percent and in Greece they are eight percent.
