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Bloomberg
After a decade-long debt crisis that made Greece a bond-market pariah, the country now enjoys the luxury of having no financing needs for 2020. Yet the government’s 2020 budget shows it still plans to sell new debt.
Despite a cash buffer of some 32 billion euros ($35.6 billion) left over from the country’s bailout programme, Greece wants to maintain the good momentum of 2019 after yields hit record low levels in October. The aim is to reduce total debt seen at 329.3 billion euros in 2019, not only as a percentage of gross domestic product, but as an absolute number too.
Greek borrowing needs for 2020 will be 1.9 billion euros, according to next year’s budget. But this amount is expected to be covered by using some of the primary surplus, privatisation receipts and by the proceeds from Greek bonds that central banks bought during the crisis under the Securities Market Programme (SMP).