Galery

1

The European Central Bank has not raised the upper limit of funding for Greek banks from the Emergency Liquidity Assistance. The limit is still 80.2 billion euro while the outflow of deposits from Greek banks is continuing, despite the opposite statements by the Greek cabinet.

According to government sources, Athens has not requested an increase in the limit as the outflow of deposits has stabilized. They insist that the situation is different and that the system has a security reserve amounting to 3 billion euro.

In recent days, however, and especially yesterday, the disagreement in the government and rumours about capital controls caused a substantial withdrawal of bank deposits.

Banking sources state that the amounts withdrawn yesterday totalled 300 million euro whereas the total amount over the past few days was 100 million euro. According to them, the decision of the European Central Bank to provide not a euro more to Greek banks "is limiting the financial resources available in the market." They add that the "cushion" of 3 billion euro has significantly diminished in recent days, as the amounts of part of the withdrawn deposits were high and totalled 1 billion euro.
 
Other sources cite three Greek bankers, according to whom the outflow of deposits amounted to 5 billion euro in April compared to 1.9 billion euro in March.

"Draghi is setting a counter," a senior bank representative told iefimerida.gr. He believes that this is the way for the European Central Bank to send a message for finding an immediate solution.