Greece reaches a deal to unlock aid

GREECE had reached an agreement with its lenders on financial reforms yesterday, its finance minister said, removing a major obstacle holding up fresh bailout loans for the cash-starved country.

Athens signed up to a new aid programme worth up to €86 billion (R1.3 trillion) earlier this year, but payment of part of an initial tranche had been held up over disagreements on regulations on home foreclosures and handling tax arrears to the state.

“There was an agreement on all the milestones… whatever was required,” Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told reporters after meeting representatives of European institutions and the International Monetary Fund on aid disbursement.

Tsakalotos said the deal meant Greece’s parliament could ratify the set of reforms to law, and that deputy euro zone finance ministers, known as the Euro Working Group, would on Friday endorse the deal.

Greece has been keen to complete its first assessment under the new bailout package, its third since 2010, so it can start talks with lenders on debt relief. Talks had previously stalled on disagreement over the level of protection for primary residences of homeowners unable to pay mortgages, the repayment of tax and pension fund arrears and revenues from VAT.

A government official said earlier that the deal provided foreclosure protection for primary residences for about 60 percent of mortgages among an estimated 400 000 homeowners whose loans had soured.

About 25 percent of that group, who were families with incomes below the poverty line, were accorded protection from foreclosure, and the remaining were given foreclosure protection for a threeyear period provided they restructured their debts with their banks. – Reuters FARMERS in Zimbabwe said that a new tax imposed by President Robert Mugabe’s government to help pay for schools and clinics in rural areas could not have come at a worse time because the southern African nation is facing a crippling drought. The tax of between $5 (R72) and $15 a hectare was announced in the Government Gazette issued on November 13. Failure to pay the levy for three consecutive quarters may result in eviction from the land, according to the notice. “It’s just another way for the government to raise money, and for farmers in the country’s dry regions particularly difficult,” Hendrik Olivier, the director of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, said this week. Olivier said implementation of new levies on farmers “isn’t correct at this time” because a worsening drought caused by the El Niño weather pattern has disrupted planting. – Bloomberg

NIGERIA

ERICSSON plans to enter the increasingly competitive African video-on-demand market in partnership with the Nigerian unit of Bharti Airtel. The Swedish telecoms company will operate the service – to be called NuVu – and make it available to Airtel’s 30 million subscribers in Nigeria in the first quarter of next year. The product will have access to 3 000 local and international TV and film titles, with prices ranging from $2 (R28.75) a month to as much as $5 a month for the full package with unlimited data. “This is a service which we aim to bring out in sub-Saharan Africa, at least at the beginning, and look elsewhere at a later stage,” Niclas Ekdahl, the managing director of NuVu, said on Monday. “This is a medium which is growing exponentially.” – Bloomberg