Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says he believes the International Monetary Fund should not participate in Greece’s third bailout, while he announced capital controls will be lifted by the end of March 2016.
Tsipras spoke to the Financial Times expressing his displeasure with the “unconstructive attitude of the fund on fiscal and financial issues”. At the same time he believes that Greece’s bailout should be solely a European Union affair.
“We think that after six years of managing in extraordinary crisis, Europe now has the institutional capacity to deal successfully with intra-European issues,” he said.
Tsipras argued that only the quick implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding Greece signed in July will drive out the Troika of lenders (the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) and lead Greece back to national sovereignty.
“We’ve been five years in a program. It’s hard for an EU country to have lost its sovereignty for such a long time. To regain it and to get out from the control of the Troika, we have to implement the [bailout] agreement. It’s hard but it’s better than any other choice,” Tsipras said.
“We believe the sooner we get away from the [bailout] program the better for our country,” he said. “If Greece completes the first [progress] review in January, we’ll be covering more than 70 per cent of fiscal and financial measures in the agreement.”
The Greek prime minister said that capital controls would be lifted by March 2016 and the country can return to borrowing from international markets by the end of next year.
However, Tsipras admitted that the third package of reforms to be voted in Greek parliament in January would be an exceptionally difficult step, since it includes restructuring security funds and farmers taxation.
“Our road-map is to complete the first evaluation as quickly as possible and then to have a positive decision for the needed debt relief,” the Greek prime minister concluded.
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