European Ministers Agree to Loan Greece Another $172 Billion
VOA News 조회 수 435 추천 수 0 2012.03.20 01:18:35This is the VOA Special English Economics Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish
European finance
ministers agreed to loan Greece about one hundred seventy-two billion dollars at
a meeting in February in Brussels. Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude
Juncker announced the agreement. "After a meeting of at least, I think, thirteen
or fourteen hours, we have reached a far-reaching agreement on Greece's new
program and private sector involvement that will lead to a very significant debt
reduction for Greece." Under the plan, Greece's private creditors will lose more
than half of the face value of their investments. The agreement also means the
country will receive its second financial rescue in less than two years.The new
loans will likely let the Greek government make a nineteen billion dollar
payment on its debt by March twentieth.Now, Greece must negotiate the terms of
its loans with individual banks and other investors. But these creditors will
have to hurry. Greece can dictate its own terms once it reaches agreement with
two thirds of its creditors.Not everyone believes Greece will be able to repay
its loans. The Fitch financial services company cut the credit rating of Greece.
Fitch said it remains "highly likely" that the country will fail to meet its
financial responsibilities.The Greek parliament has agreed to the idea of
spending and job cuts demanded by the European Union and the International
Monetary Fund. The parliament has to pass all seventy-nine measures included in
a reform plan before getting the rescue loans. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos
has said his country has a lot of work to do before it can receive new aid.At
the same time, protests continue in Greece over budget-cutting measures. Many
Greeks say they have sacrificed enough. But Greece's EU neighbors are unlikely
to release new loans until the budget cuts are in place. The head of the EU
delegation to the United States, Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida, told VOA that
the union has learned from the crisis. "We learned a lot about the means that we
need to have to deal with emergency situations. We didn't have them before. We
created, we developed them to deal with the cases like Greece and a few other
countries. Secondly, we learned that our governance system was not yet at the
right level of sophistication, and we are in fact changing a lot; if not, there
is a small revolution going on inside the euro area in the way we deal with what
we call the economic governance. There is a lot being changed." For VOA Special
English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.
(Adapted from a radio program broadcast
24Feb2012)
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