Customers are limited to €420 of withdrawals per week, a slight change to the previous withdrawal limit of €60 a day.
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Elderly people receive priority numbers while waiting outside a bank prior its opening in Athens, Greece, on Monday.
However, Capital Economics Managing Director Roger Bootle believes that the recent agreement to provide the crisis struck Greece with a third bailout would unlikely end the crisis or prevent a Grexit.
The global Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed that Greece has cleared overdue debt repayments of €2.05bn (£1.4bn) and is no longer in arrears.
The ECB payment helps give the central bank confidence to continue the emergency lending to Greek banks that enabled them to reopen Monday.
“I can’t put up my prices because I’ll have no customers at all“, Dimitris Chronis told the Associated Press, adding that sales have fallen around 80 percent since banking restrictions were imposed June 29.
That will allow banks to reopen today, although capital controls and limits on withdrawals remain in place.
“We used to deliver to offices nearby, but majority have closed”.
Sales taxes have risen from 13 per cent to 23 per cent on many basic goods – including some meats, cooking oils, coffee, tea, cocoa, vinegar, salt, flowers, firewood, fertiliser, insecticides, sanitary towels and condoms. People would order a lot and buy food for their colleagues on special occasions.
Also, many goods and services will become more expensive as a result of a rise in Value Added Tax approved by Parliament last Thursday, among the first batch of austerity measures demanded by Greece’s creditors.
In response to last week’s vote in the Greek Parliament backing the austerity measures, the ECB raised the amount of liquidity assistance on offer to Greek banks, paving the way for Monday’s reopening.
Around one fifth of Syriza lawmakers, including three ministers, rejected the deal – leaving Tsipras relying on opposition support to push through the unpopular reforms.
Officials from the government and the lenders say neither early retirement reforms or tax increases for farmers were required to be included in the two packages of legislation to be passed by July 15 and July 22. The Greek Parliament is scheduled to vote on austerity measures as early as Wednesday (July 22).
Getting the Greek economy back to normal will take time though especially as credit – the lifeblood of a modern economy – remains restricted.
The debt deal last week that leads to the finalization of a third bailout by autumn includes more harsh measures.
“There was a compromise between all heads of state and government of the euro zone to discuss this problem as soon as Greece’s first complete assessment of the new program is made”, Passos Coelho said at Lisbon’s ISCTE university in Lisbon, according to Portuguese Lusa News Agency.
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This week’s vote could heighten concerns about the stability of the government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who is struggling to carrying his left-wing Syriza party with him as he accepts worldwide creditors’ austerity demands that his government spent much of this year denouncing.
