Greece Denies Minister Wants To Delay ECB Repayments

Greece's finance ministry has hit back at media reports saying its minister Yanis Varoufakis had proposed pushing back the country's debt repayments to the European Central Bank. In a statement aimed at clarifying Varoufakis's comments at a conference in Athens Tuesday, it said the minister was putting forward the idea that Greece could use the European Stability Mechanism, which provides bailout loans, to repay bonds bought by the ECB under the Securities Markets Program. Greece is scheduled to repay 6.7 billion euros of SMP bonds in July and August.