Ecb And Imf Not To Rule Out Rescheduling Of The Greek Debt

- The European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, two biggest lenders of Greek, gave green light to talks for rescheduling the country's debt, on Monday, just after Greek voters on Sunday handed victory to radical left party Syriza, led by Alexis Tsipras.

Tsipras had staked his campaign on resistance to austerity measures that include budget cuts and tax increases demanded in return for a 240 billion euros debt, whic he said mostly had been used to bailout the banks, not the people.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde said, Greece had to respect the euro zone's rules and could not demand special treatment for its debt, in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde.

"There are internal euro zone rules to be respected. We cannot make special categories for such or such country" she said and added that Greece still needed to carry out key reforms, such as tax collection and reducing judicial backlogs.

"It's not a question of austerity measures" she said, as the leader of IMF, the international body forming Troika with European Central Bank (ECB) and Europien Union, heading to start talks with the new Greek government at the end of February.

ECB Executive Board Member Benoît Coeuré also underlined the rules of the Euro Zone, but the talks could be carried on, for rescheduling of the debt. The new Greek administration would have to repay the country’s debt, even though talks on a debt-maturity extension were possible, he said.

"Mr. Tsipras must pay, those are the rules of the game, there is no room for unilateral behavior in Europe, that doesn’t rule out a rescheduling of the debt. If he doesn’t pay, it’s a default and it’s a violation of the European rules" he said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Since Greece owes most of its debt to eurozone countries, ultimately to each country’s taxpayers, any decision on a debt rescheduling had to be made by the finance ministers of eurozone member countries, he said. The European Union’s institutions were eager to talk and cooperate with Greece, he added.

The euro/dollar turned upwards, after the statements came from the ECB and the IMF, which fell to an 11-year low of 1.1098 in early trade after the election results came, rose to 1.1258 and traded at around 1.1230 - 1.1240 level.