Greek bonds bought 2 billion euros by the ECB in the last two months – At 10% the 10-year yield

The nominal value of the Greek Government bonds purchased by the European Central Bank (ECB) until January 22, 2022 amounted to 36.8 billion euros.

According to the data published by the ECB, in the two months of December-January under the PEPP pandemic program, Greek bonds with a nominal value of approximately 1.9 billion euros were purchased from the secondary market.

Therefore, the ECB kept the value of the Greek bonds it bought (always through the Bank of Greece) almost unchanged, despite the fact that the head of the ECB, Kr. Lagarde, purchases through this program would slow down from the beginning of 2022. It is noted that the program ends at the end of March, amid strong pressures that have led to a significant increase in borrowing costs for most Eurozone countries and especially Greece.

The Minister of Finance Chr. Speaking to ERT today, Staikouras acknowledged that the cost of borrowing from the markets has increased for all European countries, which forces the government to be very careful in its fiscal policy.

However, today in the secondary bond market the yields continued to rise, with the ten-year rate hovering at the level of 2.47% (in April 2020 it had reached 2.73%) despite the reassuring report of Goldman Sacs, which estimates that the sustainability of the Public Debt of the Eurozone countries -including Greece- has not been disturbed by the recent increase in interest rates.

It is noted that with the data so far, the annual cost of servicing the Public Debt does not exceed 10% of GDP for the next 40 years, as the average interest rate on government bonds (negotiable and non-negotiable) is 1.36%.

In the domestic market and more specifically in HDAT, transactions amounting to 30 million euros were recorded today, of which 4 were related to purchase orders. The yield on the 10-year bond closed at 2.50% from 2.49% yesterday, compared to 0.22% of the corresponding German bond, resulting in a margin of 2.28% from 2.23% that closed yesterday.

In the foreign exchange market, the euro strengthened slightly against the dollar, as the European currency traded at $ 1.1437 from the level of $ 1.1414 opened by the market.

The indicative price for the euro / dollar exchange rate announced by the ECB was 1.1435 dollars.