Bond issue in good time, Tsakalotos says

The government is waiting for the right moment to tap the international markets, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told a radio interview on Tuesday, playing down concerns about the permanently high bond yield in the secondary market that is making a new issue impossible.

Speaking to News 24/7 radio, Tsakalotos said that the 26-billion-euro cash buffer is a cushion that “is not meant to stay on our bed, but to be used.” He emphasized that some of this money could be used to buy some of the debt to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which have a high interest rate and a short maturity.

Thanks to the buffer, he added, we are able to choose when we will tap the markets, reminding that the plan of the Public Debt Management Agency is for the country to draw over 7 billion euros this year.

It is reminded that PDMA has presented three alternative scenarios for drawing between 3 and 7 billion euros in 2019.