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Greece paid today the 448 million euro tranche to the International Monetary Fund, as just announced by the Athens News Agency and Bloomberg, referring to senior officials from the Greek Ministry of Finance. However, the payment could not appease the spirits and dispelled rumours about Greece’s forthcoming insolvency.
    In order to be able to make this payment and the two that are due on 14 and 17 April, Greece yesterday issued 6-month bonds worth 1 billion euro at an interest rate of 2.97%. In early May, Athens will have to repay other debts worth 1.4 billion euro, arising from maturing 6-month bonds that were issued earlier, and on 12 May, it will have to pay the next tranche to the International Monetary Fund worth 779 million euro. Now we have come to 20 June when it will have to pay 3.5 billion euro to the European Central Bank.
    At the same time, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanoma reports that the Scandinavian country is preparing for a Grexit. A secret message of the Finnish Ministry of Finance reads, "We have to take very difficult decisions on Greece before the end of June, when the country will become insolvent. One of them is whether Greece will remain in the euro zone. It will be able to obtain more loans only if it completes the agreed reform programme."
    Meanwhile Greek representative to the International Monetary Fund Thanos Katsabas has resigned. Katsabas did not accompany Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis during his meeting with Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde in Washington last Sunday. Instead, the Greek side involved Panagiotis Roumeliotis who was a representative of the Fund before Katsabas.