IMF confirms receiving Greek request for new loan

Energy Minister Panos Skourletis said Greece will look to alternatives to privatising its power grid operator

The International Monetary Fund said it had received a letter from Greece seeking a loan facility.

“We will discuss with the Greek authorities and with our European partners the timing and the modalities for the discussions,” the IMF added in a short statement. The Greek Finance Ministry said that Greece had formally submitted a request to the IMF for the new loan facility.

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Greece is due to begin talks with European Union and IMF lenders on a new bailout deal. The extent of the IMF’s participation has remained unclear once its current program expires next year.

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Panos Skourletis told the weekly Agora newspaper in an interview that Greece will look to alternatives to privatising its power grid operator ADMIE as part of a new bailout deal with its lenders As part of measures Greece agreed with its creditors to start talks on a new bailout deal, Athens has committed to selling ADMIE unless replacement measures that would also open up competition in the market can be found.

“We will follow the path of alternative, equivalent measures, as has been the case in other European countries,” Skourletis, who took over as energy minister following a reshuffle last week, told the paper.

He said the strategic importance of the power grid meant it should stay in public hands.

A previous conservative government had launched the sale of a 66 per cent stake in ADMIE, a unit of the country’s dominant electricity utility PPC, and four investors had been shortlisted as buyers.

But the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras halted the privatisation along with other state asset sales after it came to power in January.

“We should realise that PPC’s role and its assets managed by ADMIE are priceless,” Skourletis said, adding that he was also against privatising PPC. Under a previous plan agreed with its lenders, Greece would spin off PPC and sell part of its production capacity to investors.