Eurozone crisis

Cyprus's finance minister said on Tuesday the downturn on the island appeared to have bottomed out, after the economy showed an improvement over the past four quarters.

"The long recession seems to have run its course," Harris Georgiades told a conference in Nicosia.

LONDON – Greek bond yields rose on Monday after a senior European Union official said Athens was “highly unlikely” to end its bailout program without some new form of assistance that will require it to meet targets.

Yields on Greek 10-year bonds rose 11 basis points to 8.22 percent, reversing an earlier fall to underperform other eurozone bonds.

With troika envoys due to return to Athens in the coming days for talks on pending reforms, the government is seeking to finalize its position on key issues with an aim to shifting the debate to the prospects for putting Greece’s relationship with foreign creditors on a different footing and to discussing debt relief.

Peripheral European government bond yields fell on Friday as a surprise decision by the Bank of Japan to expand its monetary stimulus saw investors pile into riskier assets.

Yields on Spanish and Italian debt fell by 5 and 6 basis points respectively, while Greece led with a 22 basis point decline.

[Reuters]

Greek retail sales by volume rose 7.4 percent in August compared to the same month last year, after a downwardly revised 4.7 percent increase in July, statistics service ELSTAT said on Friday.

Sales volumes rose for the third month in a row, pointing to a boost in consumer spending in the third quarter, which may help dampen deflationary pressures.

Eleni Chrepa & Georgios Georgiou

Cyprus could benefit from strong bank stress test results and positive economic signs to pull off an Irish-style bailout exit and make a full return to the bond market, Finance Minister Harris Georgiades said.

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Greece is due to send by Saturday its proposal on several of the key issues that remain unresolved in its talks with the troika in the hope that this might pave the way for the current program review to be concluded by the Eurogroup on December 8.

Finance Minister Gikas Hardouvelis on Wednesday secured the commitment of his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble that Greece’s eurozone partners would approve the country’s early exit from the memorandum with a precautionary credit line if all is in place by year-end.

 Report says there is no plan for the period after the bailout program, and monitoring will certainly continue