by Our Foreign Desk

GREECE’S Syriza government carried out its first sell-off yesterday, flogging a 20-year gambling licence to a subsidiary of Czech-Greek company Opap for €40.5 million (£29m).

Opap was originally a state-owned company, but was privatised in 2001.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government had been largely opposed to the sale of state assets by the previous government and had pledged to halt such privatisations.

However, it has come under intense pressure from international creditors to move forward with the gambling licence sale.

Time is running out for Greece to reach a deal with bailout creditors, top eurozone official Jeroen Dijsselbloem said yesterday as he headed into discussions with his colleagues.

Mr Dijsselbloem said there was a “great sense of urgency” from all sides to get a deal done “to make sure there’s enough money to keep the government running.”

However, he dashed any expectations that one would be secured yesterday.

Greece has an end-of-April date to agree to more reforms.

Though Mr Dijsselbloem noted “April isn’t over yet,” he crowed that the deadline was far more important for Athens than the eurogroup.

For weeks, the meeting in the Latvian capital Riga was expected to be where Greece’s immediate financial future would be sorted out.

But weeks of tortuous discussions have produced little besides distrust and creditors have demanded sweeping changes to the country’s pensions and employment regulations.

The Greek government has argued against these demands, noting that it was elected to end stifling austerity that has contributed to a 25 per cent contraction in the size of the economy.