Greece needs six weeks to draw up economic plan

GREEK Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said Athens needs up to six weeks to draw up a global economic plan, as it lobbies its European allies to win backing for debt relief proposals.

“We need a maximum of six weeks: that’s the time we are seeking from our European partners to be able to finalise a coherent programme of alternative policies to austerity,” Varoufakis told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero in an interview published on Wednesday.

Varoufakis is currently in Germany on the latest leg of a tour of Europe to drum up support for the new Greek government’s push to renegotiate the terms of its massive 240 billion euro ($270 billion) bailout.

Greece wants to be able to introduce “socially compatible reforms… that must above all aim to resolve the humanitarian crisis, as the Greek crisis is more than ever a European crisis”.

The new government, led by the radical left Syriza party, won power in an election last month after pledging to end the previous conservative administration’s policies of austerity in the debt-ridden country.