Greece on Tuesday raised 2.5 billion euros (2.9 billion) from a five-year-bond, its first since exiting the last bailout, the finance minister said. "This is 36 percent of our requirements for 2019," finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos said in parliament, according to the state-run Athens News Agency. The yield was set at 3.6 percent, Tsakalotos said.

Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs International Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Societe Generale were named as managers of the bond, which has an April 2024 maturity. The previous five-year bond, in July 2017, raised 3.0 billion euros at 4.625 percent. Greece currently has no urgent need to draw money from the bond markets as it has built a cash cushion of at least 15 billion euros. "Our financing needs are fully covered to 2020," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told parliament earlier this month.

But it acts as a psychological milestone, designed to show that the country is on the road to recovery after emerging from its third international debt bailout in August. In a statement concluding its first post-bailout monitoring mission on Friday, the International Monetary Fund pegged Greek growth this year at 2.4 percent. The Greek budget forecasts 2.5-percent growth, better than the expected eurozone average.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019