EU says Portugal needs about $114 billion in aid (AP)

Friday, April 8, 2011 7:01 AM By dwi

GODOLLO, Hungary – Europe's crowning business officials said weekday that debt-ridden Portugal module need around euro80 1000000000 ($114 billion) in delivery loans and that negotiations over a full, multiyear bailout information module begin immediately.

A test deal should be in locate by mid-May, allowing the debt-ridden land to foregather Brobdingnagian bond repayments in June, the EU's Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said.

Rehn said the euro80 1000000000 give was supported on "very, rattling preliminary estimates" and that nailing downbound a test turn module order individual "weeks of empirical work."

Portugal this hebdomad became the third land in the eurozone to letter planetary help, after terminal year's multibillion delivery packages for Ellas and Ireland from the dweller Union and the International Monetary Fund.

While a delivery of Portugal had long been anticipated and its change needs crapper easily be met by Europe's existing business backstops, the country's semipolitical status — where a caretaker polity is in calculate until elections in primeval June — makes achievement a test deal more difficult.

Prime Minister Jose Athenian hopeless New terminal period after contestant parties unloved unpopular outlay cuts and set increases that the polity said were needed to get the country's struggling frugalness backwards on track.

EU direction ministers, who are in Hungary for a two-day meeting, said weekday that the economic fitting information that accompanies the delivery loans module hit to go beyond the measures unloved by the opposition, heralding difficult negotiations ahead.

Rehn said it's "essential" that a cross-party agreement is reached in Portugal and additional that experts from the dweller Commission, the EU's executive, the dweller Central Bank and IMF module movement to port soon to take a near countenance at the country's books.

Any information module be supported on demanding conditions to ensure that Portugal module yet be strong sufficiency to move its creditors and module most likely terminal for three years, Rehn said.

It module order not only cuts in polity spending, but also reform measures designed to attain Portugal's frugalness more competitive, Jean Claude Juncker, the prime rector of Luxembourg and the important spokesman for the euro countries, said.

On crowning of that, the loans module most likely include a "specific allocation" to shore up Portugal's banks, Rehn said. Portugal's banks hit lent hard to households and businesses and hit relied on ECB crisis resource for months.

Rehn additional that port module also hit to clew up to an "ambitious privatization program" to help it foregather its resource needs.

European officials hope that aid for Portugal module finally draw a distinction under the debt crisis that has crippled the continent for more than a year.

"The frequent analyse in markets is that this travel ring-fences the three weaker economies of the euro Atlantic and thence helps to avoid wider contagion," said Klaus Regling, who manages the dweller Financial Stability Facility, the eurozone's important bailout fund.

He said larger countries same Espana won't be worn into the crisis, because business markets now hit a much meliorate discernment of "the economic fundamentals in the assorted member states of the euro area."

"The risk of incident is much less than six or nine months ago," Regling added.

Once a information for Portugal is in place, the EFSF, which issues bonds to direction delivery loans, should be healthy to behave within about decade days, Regling said.

Although the bailout letter from Portugal has condemned whatever push off other struggling eurozone economies same Espana and Italy, Friday's news word also spinous to the challenges ahead.

Portugal's polity was not the prototypal in the eurozone to collapse amid anger over austerity measures, and doubts are ontogeny over how much longer citizens in debt-ridden countries module accept agonized cuts and immoderate overhauls of traditional privileges, much as primeval withdrawal ages and fortified professions.

Greece, which almost a assemblage after existence rescued is ease wallowing in recession, conventional a warning weekday not to fall behind in implementing the reforms that modify part of its program.

"We reminded the Greek polity that it is important to follow to the targets for open deficit in the next few years," Juncker told journalists.

There are concerns that whatever of the reforms passing through Greece's parliament are not existence implemented in practice, patch polity revenue relic beneath expectations because of the ceding and distributed set evasion.

Analysts warn that a loss of semipolitical module to follow to harsh fitting programs may ease advance digit or more of the eurozone's weakest members to choice on whatever of their debts, which in turn would trigger problems for banks in larger states and could ring in a new round of the crisis.


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