The International Monetary Fund (IMF) welcomed the Greek government’s intention to another return to the financial markets through the issuing of a seven-year-bond, said IMF spokesman Gerry Rice on Thursday, stressing that the “new exit” to the markets is one of the Greek fiscal programme’s targets.

“We welcomed Greece’s previous return to the markets and we welcome the new plan for a new issue,” Rice said during a daily briefing, adding that more time is required “for a full and permanent return.” He also underlined that new measures will not be necessary for the current year, while the IMF expects fiscal targets of 2014 will be met.

When he was asked about the “apology” of Christine Lagarde to Britain for the “wrong pessimistic forecasts” concerning Britain’s economy and whether the general director of the IMF “should apologize” for “troika’s mistakes” in Greece, the spokesman of IMF stressed that the IMF has been repeatedly rerferred to the Greek program, “lessons learned” and has moved to “necessary adjustments”.

The mission of the IMF, part of Greece’s troika of lenders along with the European Commission and European Central Bank, will visit Greece after the summer in order to review the Greek finacial programme, but the IMF technical staff will visit Athens sooner, Rice said.