ECB pays Greek banks to fund households and businesses

To date, Greece's four systemic banks have drawn liquidity totaling 8.4 billion euros through the instruments provided by the European Central Bank known as targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO), and they will draw more.

They are low-interest long-term loans that are issued to the banks as an incentive to increase the financing of businesses and households. The rate on these loans is currently negative, at -0.4 percent, which means that the ECB practically pays the banks to fund the economy.

Bank data show that Alpha has drawn loans of 3.1 billion euros from the Eurosystem, National follows with 2.3 billion, Piraeus with 1.7 billion and Eurobank with 1.3 billion euros.

To draw cheap liquidity, lenders mainly offer bonds as collateral, and according to estimates by bank officials, the activation of the new TLTRO program the ECB announced this week...