SYRIZA will need EU/IMF approval to use Treasury bills to cover Greece’s funding needs, if the leftist party comes to power, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday. This comes as an answer to Alexis Tsipras, the party leader, who said in a pre-election interview on Saturday that T-bills could be used to cover Greece’s fiscal needs until March. SYRIZA leads the opinion polls for the early elections on January 25th. The SYRIZA chief is promising to put an end to austerity measures required by the bailout program dictated by Greece’s international creditors, namely the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He is also promising that the leftist party will negotiate a write-off of a big part of the sovereign debt. However, the troika of international lenders has set an upper limit for T-bills. Athens has about 15 billion euros of outstanding T-bills, an amount that already exceeds the upper limit set. The Greek finance ministry noted that the Greek government will need the troika’s approval in order to issue more T-bills. And this cannot be done before the final bailout program review. Greece’s final bailout review has not been completed yet. “Greek banks will have difficulty in securing the necessary liquidity and buying T-bills if the country has not concluded the review of the current economic program or if it has not got an extension to complete it after February 28,” the finance ministry said in a statement. The European Central Bank said last week that Greece must complete with success the final bailout program review in order for ECB to release funds to Greek banks.
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