During an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Greek Minister of Economy, Shipping and Tourism Giorgos Stathakis said that banks will reopen when the European Central Bank (ECB) raises the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) to Greece, so after the various Eurozone parliaments vote on the deal. Furthermore he said capital controls will remain for “a couple of months.” The Minister also addressed the fund that will be set up to liquidate public assets and generate 50 billion euros. Out of this sum, 25 billion will be used to recapitalize banks, 12.5 billion to pay off debts and 12.5 for investments by the Greek government. “I think that this new fund will work more as a guarantee fund rather than as a fund that will go on with such huge privatization, which obviously does not exist. But I think the new 82-billion loan that Greece will receive, which is a lot of money, required some guarantee,” he said. Stathakis also outright rejected any possibility of a deposit haircut because money from the loan will be used to recapitalize banks. “I think that this program has less austerity than the previous one. Because Greece is expected to produce fiscal surpluses much lower than the ones existing in the previous program. So it is an austerity program but has less austerity than the previous program and probably that is one of the advantages of the current agreement,” Stathakis noted about the country’s new bailout program.
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