ATHENS: Greece will sell 875 million euros ($946 million) of six-month Treasury bills on April 8 to refinance a maturing issue, debt agency PDMA said on Friday, announcing the first of two auctions of short-term paper this month amid a pressing cash crunch.
The auction will be a key test of whether the government can find other sources to plug a potential gap of about 350 million euros if foreign investors refuse to roll over their T-bill exposure.
Shut out of debt markets and with aid from official creditors frozen, Athens is scrambling to cope with April payments, including 2.4 billion euros of maturing T-bills and a 450 million-euro outlay to the International Monetary Fund next week.
Issuing T-bills is the only source of commercial borrowing for the country's leftist-led coalition government which has already hit a 15 billion euro cap on such issues set by its EU/IMF lenders.
A previous sale of six-month T-bills last month was priced to yield at 2.97 percent, the highest yield in 11 months and almost twice what Portugal pays on 10-year bonds.
The European Central Bank has turned down Greece's appeals to raise the limit on short-term debt issuance on grounds that the EU treaty bars monetary financing of governments.
Greek banks - the main buyers in auctions - have been told by the ECB they cannot add to their holdings of Greek government debt to plug any gap resulting from foreign investors fleeing the auctions.
The debt agency said the settlement date of the new T-bills will be April 14.
Only primary dealers will be allowed to participate and no commission is to be paid. Athens faces another refinancing auction on April 15, when 1.0 billion euros of three-month paper matures.
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