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17.24 Troika representatives have barely been in Greece for five minutes, but already it looks like their report will not make for happy reading. Reuters has a tale suggesting that Greece is unlikely to be able to pay what it owes and further debt restructuring is likely to be necessary. It cites EU officials saying that Greece would be found to be way off track by EU and International Monetary Fund officials who have been assessing the country:
Quote Inspectors from the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF - together known as the troika - returned to Athens on Tuesday and will complete their debt-sustainability analysis next month, but the sources said the conclusions were already becoming clear.
It means Greece's official-sector creditors - the ECB and euro zone governments - will have to restructure some of the estimated €200bn euros of Greek government debt they own if Athens is to be put back on a sustainable footing.
But there is no willingness among member states or the ECB to take such dramatic action at this stage.
"Greece is hugely off track," one of the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "The debt-sustainability analysis will be pretty terrible."
