Greek creditors return in urgent bid for bailout cash

Athens and its creditors -- the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- managed to iron out differences on additional fiscal cuts, to restart the talks that had been interrupted in March.

But disagreements remain on labour rights and the partial privatisation of Greek near-monopoly electricity provider PPC -- both thorny issues for the leftist-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

"Talks are to begin tomorrow and are expected to last several days," European Commision spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a daily briefing on Monday.

Greece and its creditors agreed a third, 86-billion-euros bailout deal in July 2015.

But the International Monetary Fund has so far refused to take part after two prior programmes on the grounds that the targets were unrealistic and Athens' debt mountain unsustainable.

A senior IMF official said on Friday that it was "urgent" to reach a new agreement on the bailout programme, the latest payment of which has been held up by the row between Greece and its creditors.

Under pressure from its creditors, Athens earlier this month accepted to reduce pensions in 2019 and lower tax breaks in 2020.

According to reports, the total package of cuts over two years is worth around four billion euros (4.3 billion dollars).

The announcement of some positive fiscal figures should help the talks.

Athens last week said it had registered a primary surplus of 4.19 percent of GDP in 2016, a figure confirmed by EU statistics agency Eurostat earlier this week.

Under the bailout, Greece needed to clock a primary surplus of 0.5 percent of output in 2016, followed by 1.75 percent this year and 3.5 percent in 2018. Nampa/AFP