Eurozone Finance Ministers reached an agreement after a 13-hour meeting on Greece on Tuesday that a sum equivalent to the income from the SMP (Greek bonds purchased under the European Central Bank's Securities Market Programme) will be sent to Greece; however, Slovakia managed to be exempted from these transfers.
According to Finance Minister Peter Kažimír, his European colleagues accepted his argument about a specific situation at the Slovak Central Bank. Due to its own overall negative equity - it needs to use any positive economic result for amortisation of its accumulated loss. "If Slovakia hadn't been exempted, the one-time transfer to Greece would have to be financed from the budget, which would worsen the Slovak accrual of debt as well as the deficit," said Kažimír as quoted by the TASR newswire. He added that even if NBS could transfer its income from SMP to the state budget, under the European framework ESA95 this would be considered only a cash transfer and not budgetary income, a fact that would adversely and unacceptably impact the Slovak deficit and debt.
Eurozone finance ministers and the IMF have reached a deal on a bailout for Greece, according to which member states will release the next tranche of bailout loans to the tune of €43.7 billion. The first disbursement will take place in December. The agreement also includes a plan to reduce Greece's debt level to 175 percent of its gross domestic product by 2017 and below 110 percent by 2022.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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