by Our Foreign Desk
GREEK ministers and eurozone officials voiced optimism last night that new proposals by Athens could offer a possible basis for agreement to continue co-operation to resolve its debt crisis.

Economy Minister Giorgios Stathakis said that new ideas offered by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Brussels included taxes on businesses and the wealthy rather than the further cuts in salaries and pensions demanded by Greece’s creditors.

Eurozone finance ministers welcomed the plan, suggesting that there could be a deal “within days.”

Greece will default if it does not repay a €1.6 billion (£1.1bn) IMF loan by the end of the month, which is considered essential to continue the bailout of foreign, mainly German, banks.

Mr Stathakis told the BBC economics editor Robert Peston that he was confident that new proposals had broken the deadlock with creditors.

He said that the proposals also included an increase in the VAT rate for some selected items, but this would not be applied to domestic electricity bills.

Mr Stathakis explained that the government had agreed with the IMF and eurozone governments that the targeted budget surplus would be 1 per cent of gross domestic product this year, 2 per cent next year and 3 per cent the year after.

However, there was no agreement on the Syriza government’s insistence that Greece’s massive burden of debt should be rescheduled.

Dutch eurozone official Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chaired yesterday’s emergency meeting of finance ministers, said: “It’s an opportunity to get that deal this week.”

Mr Dijsselbloem said that technical experts evaluating the Greek plan believe that it “is broad and comprehensive, but they really need to look at the specifics to see whether it adds up in fiscal terms.”

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker called the proposals a sign of progress, but he warned that “we are not yet there.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had warned earlier against expecting too much of yesterday’s meeting, noting: “There are still a lot of days left to come to a decision.”

Her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that, despite talk of a new plan, “we have so far received no substantive proposals” to place before last night’s EU summit meeting.