Eurozone, IMF to release $57B to Greece

European and global financial leaders have agreed to release 44 billion euros, the equivalent of $57 billion, in critical loans to Greece and to provide billions in additional debt relief to help the country stabilize its ailing economy.

After three weeks of negotiations, Greece's euro partners and the International Monetary Fund agreed early Tuesday morning to release the loans in four installments beginning next month. The leaders also settled on a raft of measures -- including a debt buyback program and an interest-rate cut on loans -- that will reduce the country's debts by about 40 billion euros.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras hailed the agreement in Brussels as a victory. "Yesterday, a very gray, a very dark time for Greece ended definitively," he said in a televised address to the nation, adding that the agreement "managed to ensure us remaining in the euro."

But the country will still face years of economic pain as austerity measures that were agreed to as part of the bailout package are implemented.

The interest rate charged on Greece's benchmark 10-year bonds, an indicator of investor confidence in a country's finances, fell 0.2 percentage points to 14.47 percent on the news of the debt deal.

"There remains the potential for this deal to fall apart in the medium term, as there are a lot of moving parts and it is a long way away from the permanent fix that the IMF had been insisting upon," said Gary Jenkins, managing director of Swordfish Research.

For three years, Greece has been struggling to convince markets as well as its creditors that it can get a grip on its public finances. The country is predicted to enter its sixth year of recession, weighed down by an unemployment rate of 25 percent.

Without bailout money, the country would be facing bankruptcy and a possible forced exit from the 17-country eurozone. This would have potentially chaotic repercussions for the world economy.