Greece is set to meet its financial obligations to the IMF and pay workers’ salaries and pensions next week, a government source said on Friday, easing speculation that Athens could default on its debts with unknowable consequences for global markets.
“Everything that should be paid next week, the IMF, wages, pensions, will be,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Greece must pay the IMF 460 million euros (US$501.17 million) by Thursday next week to meet the conditions of its loan agreement, and speculation had been rife it would fail to pay if forced to choose between workers and the institution.
Another source told reporters that the payment of 250 million euros in interest due later this month and the 2.4 billion euros’ worth of government bonds due to mature on April 13 and 17 were also no longer sources of anxiety for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ administration.
Reducing Greek debt — which last year reached 176 percent of national output — is among the main priorities of Tsipras’ SYRIZA party.
IMF and EU analysts are scrutinizing a list of economic reforms proposed by Athens in a bid to unlock another 7.2 billion euros in loans to stave off possible bankruptcy and a euro exit.
Two meetings of eurozone analysts are due to take place next week on the topic of Athens’ finances.
Since 2010, Athens has received two successive loans from the EU and the IMF totaling 240 billion euros in exchange for tough austerity measures.
In related news, Cyprus is to scrap its last remaining capital controls, two years after they were imposed in the heat of its banking crisis, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said on Friday.
In a televised news conference on the economy, Anastasiades said the last of the draconian measures — imposed to avoid a run on banks — would be lifted on Monday.
“The removal of the remaining restrictions marks the final restoration of confidence in our banking system,” Anastasiades said.
“This reinforces the positive outlook for raising investment under conditions of full trust and confidence,” he said. “It strengthens the ability of the banks to raise capital and safely finance the economy.”
After a three-year recession Cyprus expects to return to marginal growth this year.
Cypriot authorities closed the banks for two weeks in March 2013 as they put the final touches on a 10 billion euro bailout from the EU and the IMF.
They imposed a raft of measures on domestic and international capital movements when the banks reopened. All domestic capital restrictions were lifted in May last year.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS