Greece's Creditors Seek Details on Austerity Plan

WSJ: ATHENS—Greece's international creditors have called on Athens to provide more details on its €11.5 billion ($14.14 billion) austerity plan that is crucial to keeping the country's funding lines open, as Athens faced dwindling cash reserves.

A visiting delegation of international representatives met Thursday with Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras and agreed to see him again on Sunday in an effort to reach a deal on the cuts needed to pay the next tranche from the country's second €173 billion bailout.

In Thursday's meeting with International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank, also known as the troika, Mr. Stournaras and other Greek officials tried to finalize the austerity package for 2013 and 2014 that Athens is expected announce by the end of August.

"What is needed is a specialization of some measures—from those that we have put forth," said a senior Greek government official who took part in the meeting. "On Sunday, a first round of talks will have been completed and the measures will have been identified."

Mr. Stournaras is being asked to walk a tightrope on the savings plan—balancing demands by Greece's lenders for the cuts, worth some 5.5% of annual economic output, and calls from Greece's coalition partners to avoid across-the-board reductions on pensions, public-sector salaries and social-welfare benefits.

On Wednesday, junior coalition partners—Pasok and Democratic Left—dropped demands to implement the steep cuts over a longer period of time after disagreeing over the right austerity mix with conservatives New Democracy. The weeklong deadlock signaled the first signs of cracks appearing across the fragile coalition partnership.

Greece is fast running out of cash after two national elections in May and June prevented a review of the nation's bailout program by international creditors needed to clear the way for more aid.

As the economy stumbles through its fifth year of recession, Greek government revenue have suffered from a drop in personal-income-tax payments due to wage cuts and record-high unemployment, while soaring business bankruptcies have weighed on collections of value-added and other taxes. At the same time, contributions to Greece's deficit-ridden, pay-as-you-go pension system have tanked as the army of jobless workers grows.

With the country facing the risk of running out of cash in coming weeks, two senior Greek government officials said Thursday Athens plans to issue more treasury bills this month and tap its bank-recapitalization fund to pay a €3.2 billion repayment to the European Central Bank and fund its financing needs until the end of September.

The officials said earlier plans for a bridge loan and delaying the payment to the ECB are being abandoned. The repayment to the ECB is due on Aug. 20.

"Our euro-zone partners dismissed the idea of a bridge loan while delaying a payment to the ECB would further rattle the markets," one of the officials who is handling the matter said. "So we are looking to issue around €6 billion in treasury bills this month and temporarily tap the bank-recapitalization fund to make it through September."

Greece issues on average around €4 billion in treasury bills each month. A second official said the government also may tap more than a billion euros from the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, which is meant for bank recapitalizations.

In a bid to get the economy back on to a growth path, pick up the pace of reforms and attract investments, Greek Development Minister Costis Hatzidakis presented Thursday a 10-point plan that includes measures to tackle bureaucracy and improve transparency, better absorb European Union structural funds to bolster liquidity and pledge swift progress with privatizations that have been delayed.

A further effort to push ahead with the country's privatization program will be made Friday when Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is likely to meet with the leaders of Pasok and Democratic Left in a bid to clear legal obstacles holding up the sale of state assets.

— Stelios Bouras and Philip Pangalos contributed to this article.