FRANKFURT (MNI) – European officials should consider allowing the
recently created E440 billion European Financial Stability Facility to
acquire the government bonds purchased by the European Central Bank
through its Securities Markets Program once markets stabilize, ECB
Governing Council George Provopoulos said in an interview published
Sunday.

In an interview conducted late last week by Dow Jones and published
in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Provopoulos noted that the ECB’s
bond-buying program was temporary and that the question of what to do
with the bonds once markets normalized still needed to be addressed.

“Although the issue of whether the European Union stabilization
fund would be able to purchase the debt obtained by the ECB under the
Securities Markets Program is not foreseen under the provisions of the
stabilization fund, the idea merits further consideration,” Provopoulos
said.

One reason would be that such an action would transfer default risk
back to governments, thereby helping to underpin the central bank’s
independence and allowing it to focus on its price stability mandate.

However, Provopoulos, who also heads the Bank of Greece, stressed
that default was not an option.

“The Eurosystem is buying securities precisely because it does not
consider default a possibility,” he said.

Provopoulos, who heads Greece’s central bank, said the Greek
government was on track to meet, or possibly surpass, its 2010 target of
cutting the public deficit to 8.1% of GDP from 13.6% in 2009.

“A number of fiscal measures announced by the government have not
yet been implemented–they will take effect later this month and next
month,” the central banker said. “I expect that these additional
measures will reduce this year’s deficit by a further 2.5% of GDP,
bringing the deficit to the government’s target of 8%, if not less.”

Provopoulos also said Greece’s large banks were sufficiently
capitalized to weather the current crisis, but he conceded that banks
could face further losses from non-performing loans and that smaller
banks in Greece may require assistance.

“Of course, not all banks are the same or face similar shocks, so
one cannot exclude the possibility that some banks, especially smaller
banks, may need support,” Provopoulos warned. “The Bank of Greece
considers that significant economies of scale could be achieved if there
was a consolidation in the banking system. But it is not up to us, it is
up to the market.”

Provopoulos also commented on exchange rate regimes, saying that
the Governing Council of the ECB saw “the possibility of a disorderly
correction of global imbalances as a downside risk to economic growth.”

“These [FX] regimes enable the countries concerned to maintain
current-account surpluses while they accumulate large amounts of
foreign-exchange reserves,” Provopoulos said. “Large, sustained
current-account imbalances–whether deficits or surpluses–are not
desirable in terms of global economic welfare.”

He was speaking before the People’s Bank of China announced on
Saturday that it would allow more flexibility for the yuan, though it
did not specify how and said there would be little change in the
exchange rate for now.

— Frankfurt bureau: +49-69-720 142; email: frankfurt@marketnews.com —

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