Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said that the Greek debt is unsustainable and Athens needs to delay payment on 27 billion euros of Greek state bonds to the European Central Bank (ECB). In July and August, Greece has to pay 6 billion euros for those bonds. “It’s quite simple, these bonds must be pushed back to the distant future, this is clear also to the ECB,” Varoufakis said in an Economist conference on Thursday. He was referring to bonds purchased by the ECB in 2010 and 2011. The Greek Finance Minister said that Greece could return to the markets quicker if the country’s bonds were part of the ECB’s 60-billion-euro quantitative easing program. Referring to the final 7.2 billion tranche of bailout aid, Varoufakis said that at this point, the next tranche is of no importance. After five years of a failed program, we should not be talking about the next tranche. Greece needs reforms because it will sink without them, he said. Varoufakis further stated that his government will not sign off on a bailout deal that will hurt Greece. Even if the debt is eliminated, he said, the issue of development will not be resolved. Speaking about measures that Greece will propose to creditors, Varoufakis said that there will not be any changes on value added tax before the end of summer, while any changes decided will not have recessionary character. On privatizations, the Finance Minister reiterated the government’s position that the Greek state will be a shareholder of any state assets to be privatized. He added the proposal that shares of companies to be privatized could be given to security funds to compensate for PSI losses. Finally, when asked about the possibility of a Grexit, Varoufakis said, “I wish we had the drachma and the ability to build the European Union from scratch. But since we are in the Eurozone, there is no way out. An exit would be catastrophic.”
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