The International Monetary Fund’s approved the release of 1. 7 billion euros as its share while Germany’s parliamentary budget committee also cleared the way for Athens to receive 2.5 billion euros from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Greece will get another 1.5 billion euros from eurozone central banks that profited from buying Greek bonds on the secondary market.

The money will go into a special account at the Bank of Greece, from where some 2.2 billion euros will be used to pay bonds that mature in three weeks. Athens is to receive another 1 billion euros in October if it carries out the “prior actions” demanded by the troika.

While this was taking place, the Prime Minister of Italy Enrico Letta, on a visit to Athens, questioned the way the Greek bailout had been structured. “The timing was wrong,” he said. “The instruments were wrong. The interventions were not made in the right way and at the right time and this worsened the crisis.”

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras did not want to be drawn into this discussion and stressed that the aim of Greece now is to produce a primary surplus as quickly as possible, so it would not have to rely on eurozone and IMF loans.

Samaras and Letta said that Greece and Italy would coordinate their efforts for next year’s rotating EU presidency. Greece will be holding the rotating EU presidency in the first half of next year and Italy in the second.