Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said that Greece will return to the bond markets in 2017, seven years after losing access to the markets due to its debt crisis.
“We will return to the markets in 2017,” Tsipras said in an interview with the Realnews weekly newspaper on Saturday.
While the eurozone country has continued to raise funds through short-term, low-risk, bonds, Greece has not had access to the medium- and long-term bond markets since 2010, when Athens sought the first of three multi-billion euro (dollar) bailouts from the EU and the International Monetary Fund.
Since then Greece has made just two brief returns to the medium-term market, in 2014, during a period of slight growth.
last year Athens agreed on its third EU-IMF bailout loan and is awaiting the green light from a meeting of eurozone finance ministers, in May 24, for the latest tranche of this money to be handed over.