Eurozone finance ministers, meeting Thursday to discuss the thorny issue for a fifth week in a row, were this time expected to give the final go-ahead to a long-awaited bailout tranche to Greece, dpa reported. "We will today - as I see it, sense it, feel it and want it - take a final decision in the matter of Greece," the president of the Eurogroup panel, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, told reporters in Brussels ahead of the talks. "It's been quite an odyssey," EU Economy Commissioner Olli Rehn added. "I'm confident that we will find a decision today. We can agree on a way forward concerning the next disbursement for Greece ... (It) will remove the doubts that are hanging over Greece." The eurozone's bailout fund is expected to disburse 34.4 billion euros (44.8 billion dollars) this month, followed by another 9.3 billion euros in three installments during the first quarter of 2013. The money will help keep Greece afloat while it works to get a handle on its financial woes, including its ballooning debt. At the behest of its international creditors, Athens has carried out a debt buy-back programme that saw it accept tenders worth 31.9 billion euros over the last few days. Greece's creditors - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - had hoped that the scheme would reduce national debt by 11 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), or about 20 billion euros. EU officials have declined to comment on reports that the scheme has not shrunk the debt mountain enough, or that Greece will need to borrow more money than expected for the operation. When asked about the latter, Luxembourg Finance Minister Luc Frieden said he thought eurozone finance ministers had found during a recent conference call "the appropriate mechanisms" to address the issue. "This debt buy-back has had its effect," French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici added Thursday. "I am going into today's meeting with a lot of confidence ... I think we can and we will take the right decision, meaning to disburse," he said. The ministers have promised to consider further debt-reducing measures for Greece - such as relief on its interest rates - if the buy-back programme were to have "a positive outcome." The IMF had also made the debt buy-back a condition for any more aid to flow from its end for the cash-strapped country. This latest bailout tranche should have originally been disbursed in June, but was delayed as the Greek government raced to meet austerity and reform conditions demanded by its creditors. In early November, it managed to narrowly pass a new package of salary decreases, pension cuts and tax hikes totaling 13.5 billion euros. The move brought tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets.
