Greek central government debt inches down to 320.42 bln in Q1
Greece’s central government debt slipped by 1.06 billion quarter on quarter in Q1 2014 to 320.42 billion from 321.48 billion in the previous quarter, according to the Finance Ministry debt bulletin published on Wednesday.
The quarterly movement reflects redemptions of long-term bonds issued domestically (1.85 billion) and Financial Support Mechanism (FSM) loans (1.3 billion) more than offsetting a net increase in repo loans by 2.07 billion.
The latter appears in the debt structure for the first time and most likely involves cash reserves of the state bodies for which the Public Debt Management Agency offered repos to cover short-term funding gaps.
The debt structure showed marginal changes with FSM loans at 211.86 billion, corresponding to 66.1 percent of total, long term bonds at 74.48 billion (23.2 percent of total) and T-Bills at 14.99 billion (4.7 percent).
Disbursements from the FSM amounted to 214.9 billion by the end of March 2014, of which 186.5 billion refer to the European Union - bilateral loans (52.9 billion) and EFSF (133.6 billion) - and 28.4 billion to the International Monetary Fund.
Taking into account that repayments to the IMF started in Q3 2013 and totalled 3 billion by the end of Q1 2014, the IMF net financing has been reduced accordingly to 25.4 billion and FSM outstanding financial aid to 211.9 billion.
The weighted average residual maturity of debt stands at 15.84 years, which is slightly lower than the 16.02 years at the end of 2013. The respective figure for new borrowing in 2014 stands at 0.36 years and refers to T-Bills.
More than three quarters of outstanding debt has a residual maturity exceeding 5 years, 10.3 percent has a maturity between 1 to 5 years and the remaining 12.9 percent a residual maturity of up to 1 year.
Greece’s cash deposits dropped to 1.94 billion at the end of March from 4.03 billion at the end of 2013 and most likely involve IMF repayments of 1.3 billion as well as debt redemptions.
Due to the delayed completion of the troika’s last review, the EU tranche of 6.3 billion initially scheduled for the first quarter was disbursed on April 24. The IMF’s executive board is due to convene by the end of May to decide on the disbursement of its tranche.
The MoF also provided for the first time a breakdown of outstanding guarantees, which remained broadly flat quarter on quarter at 17.7 billion.
Almost half of this amount relates to guarantees to state-controlled entities, namely the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) (6.06 billion) and Attiko Metro (2.2 billion) and 1 billion to extra budgetary funds.
In addition, 3.9 billion involves guarantees to public corporations, with the bulk (2.07 billion) regarding the Public Power Corporation (PPC), while 1.9 billion relates to guarantees to private enterprises which are not specified.
E' da ieri che mi chiedo che cosa sia successo.
