By LAURENCE NORMAN
Wall Street Journal
BRUSSELS - Greece's
official lenders could need to step in twice more to help the country as it
very slowly recovers from its economic crisis, Luc Coene, the president of
Belgium's National Bank, said in a radio interview Wednesday morning.
Asked whether Greece's euro zone partners
will need to prepare a third aid package for Greece, Mr. Coene, who is also a
European Central Bank Governing Council member, said there will need to be at
least one more package of support.
Workers of the Greek General Mining and
Metallurgical Company shout slogans while marching to the Parliament in Athens
on Tuesday. "It's clear that we are not… at the end of the Greek problem
for the moment. We will have to make some extra efforts - certainly once,
perhaps twice - we will see how the situation evolves," he told Belgium
radio station RTBL.
Mr. Coene said that Greece is seeing an
improvement in its economic situation but it is "very slow" and it
will take "a lot more time" to sort out Greece's problems. However,
he said the challenges in Greece no longer place the "whole edifice"
of the euro zone at risk.
While it isn't clear whether Mr. Coene was
referring to two future separate aid packages for Greece or different ways to
address the country's cash shortfall and still too-high debt, his statement
adds to a buildup of rhetoric building the case for more aid to Greece.
There has been broad recognition that the
euro zone will have to stump up extra money to help Greece overcome a financing
gap toward the end of the year with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble
admitting last month a third bailout will be needed.
Greece is drawing on a €200 billion bailout
from the euro zone and a €40 billion package from the International Monetary
Fund. A team of international experts from the troika of supervising
institutions - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF -
are due in Athens later in September to check on progress.
Speaking around five years after the
collapse after of Lehman Brothers, Mr. Coene also said the financial situation
was "much better armed" to prevent another crisis and to absorb the
shocks of one if it did happen.
"A crisis can always happen again
because we can't control 100% all the elements of the financial system,"
he said. "But I think we are now much better armed to prevent it and above
all to absorb the possible shocks that could be caused."
Mr. Coene said the banking system has much
more liquidity and a much stronger capital base than before the crisis. He was
particularly upbeat on the Belgian system, saying the banks here have undergone
"a very great transformation" since the crisis. He said there is now
very little speculative activity by Belgian banks and that the domestic bank
system is one of the few in the region to maintain solid levels of lending to
the business community.
"The sector has continued to carry out
its role - that's to say to give credit to the Belgian economy," he said. Mr.
Coene also said that if the French and Belgian governments stick to their plan
of gradually winding down Dexia Bank, the two governments will over time reduce
the losses they absorbed by stepping in to stave off the bank's collapse.
