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Greek drama’s denouement is slowly approaching its culmination. According to experts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), not only will Greece not have a primary budget surplus, but it is also returning to a budget deficit. At the Eurogroup meeting in Riga ten days ago, Director of the IMF’s European Department Poul Thomsen informed the finance ministers that Greece would end this year with a budget deficit of 1.5% of GDP.
    The memorandum of financial stability of Greece provided for a budget surplus of 3% for 2015 and the government of Alexis Tsipras was negotiating to reduce it to 1.5% of GDP. The IMF states the Greek programme has run off the rails and it will require another belt tightening amounting to a minimum of 5 billion euro to bring it back into line with the targets. 
    Alternatively, Poul Thomsen suggested that Athens should announce suspension of payments to the creditors and they in turn should proceed to restructuring of Greek debt. According to correspondent for the newspaper Kathimerini in Brussels Eleni Varvitsioti, the euro zone finance ministers are sceptical about the IMF proposal without completely rejecting it. The Greek government perceives it as Poul Thomsen’s personal tactics that would cause significant turmoil in Greece and it would implement in a chaotic way the macroeconomic targets that were not achieved with the huge financial bailouts in 2010 and 2012. Last night Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras discussed these issues in a phone conversation with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.
    Greece expects to receive the last mega instalment of 7.1 billion euro from the previous bailout, 3.5 billion euro of which come from the IMF that will hardly pay the amount to a country with such a huge budget deficit. Experts estimate that the deficit is increasing the financing requirements of Greece that, according to them, will not do without a third bailout package that could amount to up to 50 billion euro.
     In this atmosphere, Athens is sending emissaries to President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi to ask for an increased liquidity for Greek banks. The minimum target is to increase the upper limit of short-term bonds that the government issues to finance the payment of pensions and salaries. According to people familiar with the negotiations, this would only be possible if the talks between the technical teams of the institutions marked a significant progress.
    On 12 May, Greece must pay a 700 million euro debt to the IMF whereas the requirements for the payment of salaries and pensions by the end of the month amount to 2.5 billion euro.