EUROZONE CRISIS

Greece suggests bond swapping instead of haircut

The Greek Finance Minister has unveiled a plan to swap his country's outstanding debt for a special kind of growth-linked bonds. The idea is to win time and get the support of Germany by dropping any talk of a haircut.

In an interview for Tuesday's edition of the Financial Times, Greece's new Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said his country was interested in easing the current standoff with its main international creditors.

He said the new government was well aware of the sacrifices that needed to be made in the months ahead, adding that Athens was willing to push through a reform agenda and secure a sustainable primary budget surplus.

Varoufakis told the FT he was aiming for a surplus of between 1 percent and 1.5 percent of gross domestic product and acknowledged that in order to achieve that goal some of the spending promises made by the left-wing Syriza party might not be fulfilled.

Playing for time

But based on such a primary budget surplus, the government would no longer call for a write-off of Greece's 315-billion-euro ($357-billion) foreign debt, Varoufakis maintained. Rather, it would hope to get permission for a debt swap to ease the burden.

German Finance Minister speaks out on Greece

He talked about swapping European rescue loans and European Central Bank-owned Greek bonds and added he was aiming for a four-month bridging program under which the ECB would promise to keep Greece's financial system afloat.

Varoufakis said Athens would request only 1.9 billion euros, equivalent to the profits earned by the ECB from its purchase of Greek sovereign bonds after the 2010 bailout.

The Finance Minister said the government would look for additional income, mentioning specifically the need to target wealthy Greeks who had not paid their fair share of taxes during the economic slump.

"Help us reform our country and give us some fiscal space to do this, otherwise we shall continue to suffocate and become a deformed rather than a reformed Greece," he told the Financial Times.  dw de