Gov’t aims to quickly close five open issues to start debt negotiation talks

The meeting between Greece’s lenders and the Greek government will take place on Wednesday noon with the representative of the International Monetary Fund, Delia Velculescu, being the center of attention since she will be holding the “keys” of the agreement on program review and debt relief .

During the first meeting, they will prepare the plan of the negotiation talks to take place until next week. If everything goes well, they will begin the debate on the conditions under which the IMF will participate in the new program and debt relief.

But, everyone’s aim is to close quickly all open issues. And how quickly the negotiations will be completed depends primarily on the Greek side, as vice president of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovski said.

The open issues that have to be closed quickly include new pension cuts, no restrictions regarding non-performing loans (and probably without protection for the first residence, as institutions require), introduction of a new scale of income tax (incl. no tax-free income), launching the new Fund for privatization and measures to cover the fiscal gap for the period 2016-2018.