The International Monetary Fund will soon be closing its local bureau in Athens, sending home representatives of one of the most hated institutions in Greece and officially ushering in a “post-crisis Greece.”
The closure was announced by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during a visit to IMF headquarters in Washington DC on January 7.
“We look forward to a whole new chapter in our relationship, a relationship of positive cooperation,” Mitsotakis said. Stating he welcomed the decision to close the IMF office in Athens in the coming months, Mitsotakis said Greece would “continue to cooperate, but as a country that has come out of this strict IMF surveillance framework.”
The IMF was one of three lenders that gave Greece almost $320 billion in one of the largest national bailouts in history. Known as the “troika,” the European Commission and the European Central Bank completed the trio of lenders.
Greece still owes billions from the loans but Mitsotakis is optimistic about higher economic performance and growth.
In 2019, Greece repaid a slice of the money owed sooner than scheduled. The government plans to repay upfront more of the IMF loans in 2020, in an attempt to prove that the crisis is over — for good.
