Greece Plans to Repay €5 Billion of Long-Term Debt Early

(Bloomberg) - Greece plans to accelerate the repayment of billions of euros of bailout loans in the latest sign of the country's economic reversal since it nearly fell out of the euro area more than a decade ago.

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Athens will seek to repay at least €5 billion ($5.3 billion) in 2025, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at a Bloomberg event on Monday. The obligations mature from 2033 to 2042.

"We've been ruthlessly focused on fiscal discipline," he said at the event in Athens. "It's an indication of the confidence we have in our public finances."

Despite having the highest debt-to-GDP in the euro area, Greece achieved a sizable turnaround from its decade-long debt crisis when the country flirted with bankruptcy and tested the unity of the currency bloc. Greece's economy has outperformed the euro area every year since the pandemic and is expected to continue to do so in 2025 and 2026.

During the height of the Greek debt crisis, the country saw its unemployment rate nearly reach 30%. For 2024, it's expected to fall to 10.5% and further decline to 8.5% in 2028. Despite the cost-of-living crisis, many taxes imposed or increased during the crisis have been cut or even eliminated, while the minimum wage has increased to €830 a month from €650 in 2019.

Greek 10-year yields were four basis points higher at 3.23% on Monday, broadly matching the advance of euro-area peers. Appetite for Greek bonds has been strong this year as the European Central Bank reduces interest rates. The yield premium on the nation's debt over safer German bonds has fallen to just 85 basis points, the lowest since 2008.

This is not the first time that the country has repaid debt obligations early. In December it will conclude the repayment of €7.9 billion of bailout loans known as the Greek Loan Facility. This, however, will be the first time Greece will repay part of its long-term debt.

In 2023 the country regained investment-grade status, which it lost in 2010 before its first bailout program. The European Commission's latest forecasts predict Greece's GDP will expand 2.3% in 2025 and 2.2% in 2026, compared with 1.3% and 1.6% in the 20-member currency area.

Greece may still have the highest debt-to-output ratio in the single currency area, but the figure is falling. In 2020, the debt level reached to a record high of 207%, but it's expected to fall to just under 153% this year. Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis revealed in September his plan to further cut debt by about 20 percentage points by the end of 2028.

High primary surpluses — the measure of revenue minus spending excluding interest payments — along with early repayments of bailout loans and privatization proceeds have helped in the effort to put Greek debt on its declining trajectory. The government is now stepping up efforts to capture part of the shadow economy in order to boost budget revenues and at the same time continue to lower taxes, without jeopardizing the overall balance.

-With assistance from James Hirai.

(Updates with markets in the sixth paragraph.)

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