Long lines as proposal weighed

Greece opens some banks to help pensioners to make limited withdrawals

Crowds of anxious elderly Greeks thronged banks for hours from before dawn yesterday, struggling to be allowed to withdraw their maximum of €120 (Dh488, $134) for the week, after Greece reopened some banks to help pensioners who don’t have bank cards.

The often chaotic scenes came hours after Greece’s bailout programme with European creditors expired and it failed to repay a debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the first developed country to do so. The last country to miss an IMF payment was Zimbabwe in 2001.

The expiry of its bailout and the missed IMF payment left Greece cut off from vital financing and pushed it one step closer to leaving the euro. The IMF cannot lend money to a country that is in arrears.

Markets

The Eurozone’s finance ministers are set to weigh a lastminute Greek proposal for a new aid programme, submitted Tuesday afternoon, in a conference call later yesterday.

Markets appear to have taken in stride the latest developments, with investors still hopeful that a deal may emerge in the days ahead. The Stoxx 50 index of leading European shares was up 0.6 per cent while Germany’s DAX was 0.6 per cent higher.

The deadlines on Greece’s bailout and IMF payment expired after a tense weekend during which Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced he would put a deal proposal by Greece’s international creditors to a referendum on Sunday and urged a “No” vote.

The move increased fears the country could soon fall out of the euro currency bloc and saw Greeks rushing to pull money out of ATMs, leading the government to shutter its banks and restrict banking transactions. Greeks are now limited to ATM withdrawals of €60 a day and cannot send money abroad or make international payments without special permission.