Mitsotakis to Bloomberg: We aim to repay certain bailout loans ahead of schedule

Newly re-elected Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Tuesday revealed that his center-right and pro-reform government aims to repay some of Greece’s bailout loans ahead of time, speaking in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg TV.

Mitsotakis and his conservative New Democracy (ND) party won back-to-back landslide elections last month and on June 24, picking up nearly 41 percent of the general vote. The second ballot was necessary to form a majority government, given that the first, on May 21, was conducted with an electoral law favoring a simple representational system.

Asked about his second government’s targets and any messages to markets, he noted: “The first goal, and I think it’s a very tangible goal, is to get to investment grade before the end of the year,” a direct reference to a handful of upcoming assessments of international credit rating firms on Greece’s creditworthiness.

All such ratings firms, sans Moody’s, currently assign Greece a rating that is one step beneath investment grade.

The idea that a Greek government is in a position to repay bailout loans ahead of maturity would have appeared as unfathomable only a few years ago, especially in 2015, when the country faced the specter of “Grexit” from the Euro-area.