Athens will reportedly hand creditors relevant General Accounting Office data in the next few days confirming that a major portion of arrears to the private sector – totaling 1.2 billion euros – have been covered.
Government sources were active this week in maintaining that the development will free up an 800-million-euro tranche of loan money held back by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) in July 2017 until Athens proved it has fulfilled the specific target for eliminating arrears.
In a bid to avoid further scrutiny by institutional creditors’ top auditors, the same sources pointed to a “coincidental” month in August, where state’s arrears to the private sector appeared unchanged.
Unpaid tax rebates were cited as the primary reason for the negative development in the arrears category, although a top independent revenue authority official said outstanding tax returns worth 2.5 billion euros were cut by the end of September 2017 to 1.25 billion euros.
Overall, the Greek state’s arrears to the private sector reached 3.912 billion euros in August 2017, only marginally down from 3.917 billion euros in July 2017.
