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Debt relief: What measures were agreed by the Eurogroup to ease Greece’s debt burden in November 2012?

The Eurogroup agreed a set of measures designed to ease Greece’s debt burden and bring its public debt back to a sustainable path. These measures included:

  • reducing the interest rate charged to Greece on the bilateral loans in the context of the Greek Loan Facility (GLF) by 100 basis points;
  • cancelling the EFSF guarantee commitment fee of 10 basis points (it is estimated that this will save a total of €2.7 billion over the entire period of EFSF loans to Greece);
  • extending the maturity of GLF loans by 15 years to 30 years (to 2041); extending the EFSF weighted average maturities by 15 years to 32.5 years, thus significantly improving the country’s debt profile;
  • deferring interest rate payments on EFSF loans by 10 years until the end of 2022 (it is estimated that this will lower the country’s financing needs by €12.9 billion);
  • passing on to Greece an amount equivalent to the income of the ECB’s Securities Markets Programme (SMP) portfolio accruing to their national central bank.