The bailout would be the third in five years for the country, which is struggling to heal its economy and pay off its mountain of public debt.
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He said Merkel had spoken to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras twice by telephone this week but declined to provide further details.
Greece and its worldwide creditors agreed Tuesday on the terms of the country’s new bailout, which, if ratified by other eurozone governments, could unlock up to EUR86 billion ($94.76 billion) in financing over the next three years.
The stress test could take up to October to be completed and the official said that it has been recognised that capital is urgently needed by the Greek banks to normalise their operations. “We know that there is around 40 billion euros in cash under the mattresses in the real economy and that money could come (back to the banks) very very quickly”.
Earlier, Greece’s Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos had said “two or three small issues”, were yet to be resolved with lenders, following overnight talks in Athens.
Tsipras also spoke to Merkel, as well as European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and French President Francois Hollande, on Monday.
The European Commission confirmed a deal had been struck at a technical level and that political assessment would follow.
Dissenters in Tsipras’s left-wing Syriza party, who want to end bailout talks and return to a national currency, promised to fight the deal, describing it as a “noose around the neck of the Greek people”.
The eurozone’s 19 finance ministers, headed by Jeroen Dijsselbloem of the Netherlands, would then review the accord, possibly on Friday.
The deal is additionally expected to set budgetary goals for Greece.
25 percent of output in 2015, and a surplus in 2016, meaning that no new fiscal measures will be necessary until then, the source said.
Greece has been working on a third bailout, but German lawmakers are holding up the process, reluctant to push through a deal on short notice.
In 2016 the primary surplus – the balance not including debt service – will be 0.
So-called “prior actions” agreed to include a 50 billion euro privatization scheme to loot prime Greek enterprises and assets over the next 30 years, as well as a plan for dealing with 90 billion euros of past due loans. The government insists this means there is no longer any danger that the banks may have to raid bank deposits to restore their financial health.
The government also said banks will not make repossessions.
If approved, the agreement will bring to a close a bruising round of aid talks for Greece that began in January with the election of Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party, which swept to victory on a passionate anti-austerity platform. To secure the loans, successive governments have had to implement spending cuts, tax hikes, and reforms.
While the austerity has reduced budget overspending, the measures compounded a deep recession and fuelled record high unemployment.
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Harald Schultz from the IFO Institute’s Centre for Economic Studies in Munich doubts that this is just due to Greece’s debt crisis and says it doesn’t necessarily benefit the German population, telling RFI the low interest rates are punishing Germen savers.
