Investing.com - Greece’s short-term bond yields spiked and its stock market slumped on Monday as Athens and its creditors continued discussions over the bailout program.
Greece 2-Year yields rose 196 basis points to 10.739% at 12:32GMT, or 8:32AM ET. The yield hit an intraday high of 11.247% as little progress appeared to be made in the discussions over Greece’s spending cuts, pension cuts, and non-performing loans.
The Athens General-Composite was down 1.2% at 12:26GMT, or 8:26AM ET.
News over the weekend suggested that International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials were threatening to force Greece towards default as leverage in the negotiations over the bailout discussions.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde categorized the accusation as “nonsense”, but did say that she believed a coherent program was still “a good distance away”.
Athens is hoping that an agreement can be reached by April 22 so that euro zone finance ministers would be able to discuss it at the Eurogroup meeting in Amsterdam.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ office insisted on Monday that the bailout review should be concluded immediately.
“The negotiation must be concluded immediately, without unrealistic demands for additional measures beyond those set out in the July bailout agreement,” the office said.
But European Union (EU) spokesman Margaritis Schinas said that Greece had to fully implement the terms of the August deal.
Exactly when the review would be completed was uncertain with German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger saying on Monday that Berlin expected it to be completed by the end of April or early May.
Jaeger did say that Germany was confident that a solution would be found, but noted that more work needed to be done.
Greece faces more than 10 billion euros of debt payments in June and July, making the approval of the bailout program key so that Athens can access the second tranche of aid from the country’s third bailout package.