GAZ The threat to vital supplies is increasingly exercising policymakers, companies and traders as an impasse in negotiations between Athens and international creditors provokes alarm in financial markets.
Although Greece's total 2014 imports of $62 billion barely register amid global trade flows of $18.8 trillion, its failure to secure essential fuel and drug supplies would bring real suffering to the population.
With no safety net in place in the event of a euro zone exit, the fear is that prices of imports in drachma will simply surge out of reach.
Oil and gas made up 34 percent of Greek imports last year, while pharmaceuticals were the second biggest item, accounting for 5.5 percent, according to the International Trade Centre in Geneva.
"It won't be easy. Greece is a huge importer of both energy and medicine," said Wouter Sturkenboom, senior investment strategist at fund manager Russell Investments. "They will need humanitarian assistance, and that realization is a big consideration in creditor countries."
Germany's EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said on Monday that plans were needed for a "state of emergency" in Greece from July 1 if it failed to reach an agreement with its creditors, citing both energy and medicines as essential needs.
Ensuring supply and showing European solidarity for a country that will remain a member of the European Union, even if it leaves the euro zone, will demand some careful diplomatic maneuvering.
ENERGY CONCERN
On the energy front, companies and traders supplying the country's oil refineries said they were monitoring the situation closely.
But the Greek government may yet have something of a lifeline through its increasingly close ties to Moscow.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday and gas supplies are likely to be on the agenda, since Russia's Gazprom (>> Gazprom OAO) accounts for 80 percent of Greece's piped gas imports, according to data from Thomson Reuters Point Carbon.
Drug manufacturers, meanwhile, facing moral pressure not to cut off supplies, have been discussing supply options for Greece with EU officials.
The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (Efpia) says its members face unpaid bills of more than 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) from hospitals and the state-run health insurer EOPYY.
But global companies like Roche (>> Roche Holding Ltd.), Pfizer (>> Pfizer Inc.) and Sanofi (>> Sanofi) want to find a way to keep the drugs flowing.
"We are committed to Greece and to Greek patients, but it is not sustainable that my members have not been paid since last December. Whatever happens, some relief on these debts is needed," said Richard Bergstrom, Efpia's director general.
If Greece leaves the euro zone and reintroduces the drachma, companies may need to cut prices for key medicines to make them affordable but Bergstrom said this could only happen if other countries did not refer to Greek prices for their own price setting and re-exports to other EU countries were curbed.
Although Greece represents less than 1 percent of world drugs sales, it can have a much bigger impact on the wider market because of such reference pricing and re-export trade.
(Additional reporting by Nina Chestney and Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by Giles Elgood)
By Ben Hirschler
