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By Sotiris Nikas
Greece will need to pay back the amount of 190 billion euros in the next four years should the October 27 eurozone summit agreement not be implemented, and especially if the new private sector involvement plan (PSI+) is not applied in full.
At the same time, central government debt data indicate that the tough fiscal streamlining process followed in the last year and a half is beginning to bear fruit, with the growth rate of the debt slowing down considerably through the reduction of deficits.
The bonds and treasury bills maturing between now and 2015 add up to 189.5 billion euros. However, if the PSI+ program is successfully implemented with a 50 percent haircut to the nominal value of Greek bonds and if the eurozone decisions for the extension of loans are applied, then Greece’s obligations for the next four years will be reduced by half, to 95 billion euros.
The bonds maturing between now and 2020 amount to 277.5 billion euros. Clearly, the only way to lighten the public debt is for last month’s eurozone decisions to be applied in full.
Data from the state’s General Accounting Office on the course of government debt up to September 2011 put the figure at 360.4 billion euros. Compared with the same period in 2010, the debt grew by 7 percent (or 23.6 billion euros), as in the first nine months of 2010 it had come to 336.8 billion euros.
Debt growth was even smaller in the third quarter of the year compared with the first half: By June it had come to 353.7 billion euros, while increasing by just 1.9 percent in the third quarter, or 6.7 billion euros. Compared with the same quarter in 2010, debt grew by almost a third, as in the July-September period of 2010 it had grown by 19.2 billion euros, or 6.3 percent.
The contained growth of the debt is attributed to the tight monitoring by the country’s creditors. Last year, when the country entered a state of strict supervision, the central government’s debt in the January-September period had jumped 13 percent higher compared to the same period in 2009, or 39 billion euros.
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