Who is greece indebted to

It treated Greek and foreign creditors the same, making big cuts to Greek pension funds and banks, necessitating more bailouts and thereby more debt for the Greek government. Debts owed under UK law were not covered, after the UK government refused to enforce the debt restructuring. And the deal still meant that lenders got back more money than if they had sold their debt on the market.

Overall, Greek government foreign-owed debt actually shot-up in as the government took on more bailout loans to in turn bail out Greek banks allowing them a guaranteed pot of money with which to keep paying the remaining private debt, and because the economy kept crashing.

In , the Syriza government came to power, saying that the EU and IMF should agree to a debt conference to get debts down to a sustainable level, as happened for Germany in However, the EU and IMF refused to negotiate on the debt, and the EU threatened Greece with being kicked-out of the Eurozone if it did not introduce even more austerity.

Despite a referendum opposing more austerity, the Greek government caved in. This includes not being able to afford a decent diet, sufficient heating or electricity or to meet emergency expenses. Greek livelihoods and lives continue to be destroyed in the name of paying off debts to reckless lenders.

When the Greek debt crisis dominated news headlines, the world watched as its population poured on to the streets in protest. But the demands of the people were not met. These are the financial flows that drove the agenda and left the country in devastating poverty. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.

Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyse and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. The article contains information about all future principal repayments Greece is expected to make from mid until end Our data do not include short-term loans repos , most of the debt to the European Investment Bank, and loans from the Greek central bank because we do not have information about the distribution of future payments.

The IGCP and NTMA publish data on expected principal repayments on its medium- and long-term debt, and also provide information on interest rates which can be matched to the projected principal repayments. The data for Portugal are based on information at end-January , while for Ireland it is for the start of August This difference is mostly due to non-tradeable debt for which we were not able to find information beyond its face value.

With the data on principal repayments and corresponding interest rates, we estimate the annual interest payments that are expected at every point in time from until the date of the last expected principal repayment.

We take into account the existence of different types of instruments e. Figure 1. The resulting projections of cash flows, scaled by GDP for comparability, are plotted in Figure 1. Blue bars represent principal repayments and orange bars represent interest payments. Three facts are immediately clear. From Figure 1 it should be clear that whether or not we view Greece as more or less indebted than Portugal and Ireland depends on how we weigh cash flows in the near future next ten years versus cash flows in the far future more than ten years.

Different statistics that weigh these cash flows in different ways can be expected to give very different answers. How do debt statistics currently weigh together these cash flows?

For the most part, debt stocks are commonly measured and reported at face value. Table 1. Debt stocks at the end of in billion euros and as percent of GDP based on face values. As show in Figure 1 by the small orange columns, Greece has been able to borrow at much lower interest rates than either Ireland or Portugal. An alternative measure of indebtedness takes the undiscounted sum of all payments on debt, principal plus interest Dias et al.

Table 2. Debt stocks at the end of in billion euros and as percent of GDP based on zero coupon equivalent values. Table 3. Debt stocks at the end of in billion euros and as percent of GDP based on 5 percent coupon equivalent values. It is certainly a conventional choice e. Schumacher and Weder , and IMF One interesting calculation is to ask what the value of these debts would be if they had been issued by a country with no risk of default, such as Germany.

Using yield curves for German government bonds, we can construct risk-free present values, and present them in Table 4. Table 4. Debt stocks at the end of in billion euros and as percent of GDP based on risk free present values. Under these assumptions, as shown in Table 5, Greece appears to have less than half as much debt as either Portugal or Ireland.

These numbers are closer to the estimates computed under the IPSAS standard, which records a debt at market value at the time of issue, and allows for the accretion of this debt if the contracted interest rate on the debt is less than the yield to maturity of the debt.

This approach has the counterintuitive implication that the more likely a country is to default, the less indebted it will look. Table 5. Debt stocks at the end of in billion euros and as a percentage of GDP based on market rates present values. In sum, depending on the choice of statistic, we can find that Greece is either half as indebted as Ireland and Portugal, or less than half as indebted.

In our previous work, we have argued that the right debt statistic to use is probably going to be quite sensitive to the precise purpose for which the data will be used. In the case of forecasting default, for example, the right measure to use will probably also need to reflect the particular circumstances of the country being considered. But, as world leaders meet in Glasgow for the COP26 global climate conference , he said he worried that not enough was being done to tackle the most damaging effects of global warming.

This summer Greece has already seen a glimpse of what a warmer future may bring, with thousands of hectares of forest burning for days in wildfires that tore through the outskirts of Athens and other areas. Working on a scenario of a 2. Scientists warn that sea levels could rise by 20 to 50 cm 8 to 20 inches in the same period. Increasingly, bursts of extreme weather are also expected. On the night of July 11, , at least seven people were killed and more than hurt from a violent, short-lived "supercell" storm that lashed an area not far from Nea Irakleia.

Subscribe for our daily curated newsletter to receive the latest exclusive Reuters coverage delivered to your inbox. Greece battered by financial crisis from Country most indebted in euro zone at almost double GDP Tourism dependent economy vulnerable to climate change Impact of coastal erosion, rising seas could hit growth.