INTERNATIONAL lenders said Friday they are close to wrapping up an assessment mission to bail out Cyprus which its finance minister said he expected to be positive, allowing the island to participate in the ECB’s bond-buying program.

    “We are in a position to show significant progress, so I believe that (the assessment) will be positive,” Finance Minister Haris Georgiades told reporters Friday.

    He said the assessment had not officially concluded but that it would be in the “coming days.” Cyprus reached a 10-billion-euro (US$13 billion) bailout accord with the EU, IMF and the ECB, known collectively as the “troika,” in March 2013.

    The finance minister’s comments were echoed in a statement from the troika, which said the lenders had made “significant progress” toward completion of the review.

    Georgiades said discussions would continue at a technocrats level in coming days, focussed on legal details of a foreclosures law passed by Cyprus’s parliament in April.

    That law, which lenders considered a prior action before further disbursement of aid, establishes processes for banks to recoup huge mortgage debts.

    The troika said the bailout review could be concluded once they have all the details about the insolvency and foreclosure framework.

    Cyprus, a member of the eurozone since 2008, had been excluded from the 1.1-trillion-euro quantitative easing (QE) program the ECB launched in March until the law took effect.

    “A positive assessment would activate the quantitative easing tools of the ECB also in the case of Cyprus,” Georgiades told journalists.

    Cyprus has received about 6.1 billion euros in an adjustment program due to run to around March 2016, though officials have said the island is unlikely to require the entire bailout amount.(SD-Agencies)