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Victoria Mindova

The last metres in the marathon talks with the Troika on the conditions under which the bailout agreement will be signed seem to be the longest. The meeting of political leaders to coordinate the views on the future of the country has been postponed again for Wednesday. Europe is signalling that Athens should agree on the terms of the new bailout by 15 February this year. Following this schedule, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund will drive the process to its end point so that Greece can receive in mid March the first tranche of the long-term funding programme and pay the 14 billion euro coming from old loans.

 The key points of discussion between the political parties are salary cuts in the private sector, pension reductions, jobs cuts in the public administration and public enterprises. In addition to the cut of the basic pension, the Troika insists on cutting the additional pensions granted by supplementary branch funds, which exceed 150 euro, by at least 15%. Basic salaries should be cut by another 20% and the cut of the 13th and 14th salary is being discussed. If additional salaries are retained, the basic salary will be cut by a larger percentage.

According to the data of research agency Public Issue presented by Greek Sky TV, 91% of Greeks believe that the country is going in the wrong direction and 70% of the respondents are confident that the return of the drachma would be disastrous. Immerisia reports that every day, about five thousand indebted citizens are willing to change the terms of repayment of loans to adjust the family budget to their new reduced income.

Despite the unclear situation in the development of the Greek economic drama and the reigning public discontent, the Athens Stock Exchange was given a ray of hope. Turnover reached 802.21 basis points, its main index closed with a growth of 2.19% from Monday's levels and the value of transactions for the day exceeded 88 million euro. The banking sector reported significant growth jumping by 6.48%. Alpha Bank shares increased by 8.86%, Eurobank EFG by 17.06%, Attica by 5.13%, Agricultural Bank by 6.97%, Piraeus by 10%, Postbank by 11.1% and the National Bank of Greece  by 4.23%.

According to the Greek press, the positive growth of the Greek financial market is due to the agreement reached between Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and the Head of the International Institute of Finance Charles Dallara and the chairman of Deutsche Bank Josef Ackermann on the inclusion of bad debts of state enterprises in the PSI. On that basis, analysts estimate that the merger of Alpha Bank and Eurobank EFG is back on the agenda, which had revived the Stock Exchange on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Public Debt Management Agency has offered six-month bills and raised 625 million euro. The interest rate on these securities registered a slight decrease for the first time in a long while and reached 4.86%, unlike the last such auction when it was 4.90% for the same type of securities.