No debt deal for Greece yet, Eurogroup president says

One of Europe’s top-ranking economic officials sounded a positive note ahead of a meeting to discuss Greece’s progress on its third bail-out programme.

However, ahead of Friday’s meeting of euro area finance ministers, Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem also told reporters not to expect any deals with Greee to be reached that same day.

His remarks came as Eurozone and International Monetary Fund officials were pouring over the details of the Mediterranean country’s latest set of public accounts, released on Thursday evening, which showed Athens had apparently managed to beat the target set out for it by Brussels.

According to Greece’s Eurostat-approved figures, the country’s public deficit before paying interest on its debt – the so-called ‘primary balance’ – declined to 3.4% of gross domestic product in 2015.

That estimate of the primary balance also included the cost of recapitalising Greek lenders. If that burden was stripped out then Athens in fact achieved a primary surplus worth 0.7% of GDP.

That was interpreted as some to be a much better outcome than the 2015 primary deficit target of -0.25% of GDP set by Brussels. In 2016 the goal was for a primary surplus if 0.5%.

Nevertheless, the terms of Greece’s third bail-out programme did not anticipate excluding bank rescue costs when calculating the primary surplus.

Be that as it may, on Thursday evening European Commission spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt described the figures as “substantially better” than what was agreed.

In a similar vein, Dijsselbloem told reporters on Friday morning: “I'm hearing good news from Athens, so let's see where we are.”

“If we make progress on the content of the programme, and the next steps, then we need to start a discussion on debt. But we're only at the beginning of that discussion. So don't expect any deals today,” he added.

The Eurogroup president went on to explain Greece’s euro area partners were to ask Greece to prepare a package of ‘contingency reforms’ that could be implemented should the country be at risk of missing its deficit commitments.

In exchange, finance ministers were ready to begin discussing options for relieving some of the country’s debt loads although there was no appetite for reductions in the nominal value of its debts.