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The former finance minister, Gikas Hardouvelis, expressed his concern over the available liquidity for the current month. He spoke about a ‘hole’ of at least €4 billion in sovereign debt repayment funds.

According to Hardouvelis, the total shortfall for the year amounted to €10 billion if taking into account the initial deficit of 2.6 billion, 2 billion from revenue delays for the first two months of the year, and the 2 billion price tag of the increase in non-taxable income to €12,000.

Today, in an interview on Mega TV, Hardouvelis stressed that theoretically there are two possible solutions to the problem of Greece now.

The first one is to use the €11 billion life belt from the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, and seek overseas lending with European bonds as security.

The second option is to issue sovereign bonds. Yet this is hampered, on the one hand, by the fact that it would need the approval of the three institutions (EU, IMF and ECB), and, on the other, by the absence of interest among foreign investors.

As the former finance minister pointed out, "foreigners have given up on coming to tenders" as of late, even to simply refresh their current positions in Greek securities: this is due to the liquidity, which is the primary topic in negotiations with the creditors.

Hardouvelis also spoke about how Greece had reached the stifling two-month extension of the memorandum by the Eurogroup in December. He argued that the main culprits were the Finns who insisted on a mere monthly extension, to rid them of tension during the start of their election period. The other culprit was the Eurogroup president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who offered a two-month extension as a compromise against the three months requested by Athens and approved by the EU.

The ECB demanded a six-month extension, but Hardouvelis himself rejected it because he wanted to get the €7.2 billion tranche in March, once the assessment is completed. "I, Gikas Hardouvelis, never intended to set a trap for anyone, I was only thinking about my country: we did need liquidity," the former minister said.

He also mentioned the shock caused by the Greek statement that the coffers were empty of liquidity.

Hardouvelis argued that any extension was a memorandum in itself: "The moment you sign an extension, you are signing a memorandum as well. The reason for creditors making all that noise was than they wanted Greece to complain loudly of having signed the memorandum so that they could push the agreement through their parliaments," said Hardouvelis, adding "as soon as we find alternative sources of funding, we can tear off the memorandum."

The former finance minister mentioned the Portuguese example as well. When the IMF turned down Portugal’s request for further loans, the government issued 30-year bonds, and thus showed the IMF the door.