Greek PM Expects to Exit Bailout ‘Much Earlier’ Than August 2018 Expiration

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Saturday his country could complete the bailout program with international creditors before it expires in August 2018.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The third bailout package of up to $95 billion, agreed to in July 2015 and hammered out in August, is administered to Greece over the next three years in exchange for strict economic reforms, including recently enacted pension cuts and tax hikes.

"We will return to the markets in 2017… And, maybe, we will definitively come to an understanding much earlier than the end of the program in August 2018," Tsipras said in an online excerpt of an interview with Greece’s Real News weekly.

Athens was estimated to owe more than $270 billion of its $350-billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and eurozone nations at the start of the third bailout talks. Its next repayments are expected later this summer.

Greece was particularly hard hit by the 2008-2009 economic crisis, and was offered massive bailout programs from the international lenders. The economic hardship, multiplied by the mismanagement of previous Greek governments, has resulted in Athens being saddled with a multibillion-dollar debt. The last Greek bailout program expired on June 30, 2015.

Under the latest package and after passing controversial austerity reforms, Greece awaits the next and second tranche of $6.5 billion under the European Stability Mechanism.

European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said this week the Eurogroup Working Group experts planned to review Greek reforms to unlock the payment on May 24.