24 August 2015

VoxEU: Back from the brink - Policy reform and debt relief in Greece

The new agreement did raise the possibility of debt relief through longer maturities, but explicitly ruled out a haircut on debt principal (Euro Summit 2015). On August 14, 2015, Eurozone finance ministers agreed with Greece on the new support program for €86 billion. The IMF indicated it would only participate if the Eurozone grants Greece debt relief.

In evaluating the new situation, it is important to recognise that the headline debt figure overstates the true burden of Greek debt. Because most of the debt is owed to official sector partners at concessional interest rates, the interest burden is much lower than would usually be associated with the same gross debt. Under the Fund’s own criterion for sustainability in these circumstances (ratio of gross financing needs to GDP), Greek debt should remain within an acceptable range at least through 2030. It is questionable to base debt relief policy on problems that might or might not materialise beyond such a distant horizon. Moreover, most of the projected sharp increase in debt could be avoided by carrying out bank recapitalisation directly from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to the banks, rather than through the Greek government as an intermediary.

There is still an important potential role for using interest rate relief, for two purposes. First, if fiscal balances fall below target because of lower than expected growth (rather than policy slippage), a portion of interest otherwise accruing could be forgiven to avoid the need for additional fiscal tightening and its recession-aggravating consequences. Second, because Greek unemployment is at depression levels (26%), special employment programmes would seem appropriate, and forgiving a portion of the interest due could provide a significant source of funding for this purpose.

[...]

Debt relief?

Rather than focusing on amortisation and risk of replacement of low-interest official debt by high-interest private debt after 2030, the concern of the IMF (2015b), it could be more useful to focus debt relief on contingent compensation already in the present decade in the event that fiscal balances deteriorate from the planned path because of lower than expected GDP growth. For example, if growth turned out to be 2% in 2017 instead of 3%, revenue would be lower by 0.4% of GDP (Cline 2015: 10). This amount could be compensated by forgiving about one-fifth of interest due on Eurozone claims (excluding ECB).

A parallel line of interest relief could forgive part of the interest as a means of financing employment-intensive public works programmes. If such programmes paid a wage of 90% of the minimum wage, allocating one-fourth of the interest due to Eurozone partners (or about €1 billion annually) would suffice to hire 135,000 workers, about 11% of the total number currently unemployed (Cline 2015: 11).

As for the capacity to meet gross financing needs by 2030 and after, in principle the ESM partners could commit to evaluation of the need for further stretch-outs of maturities (and reductions in interest rates) for that period closer to the event.

IMF participation?

[...] IMF monitoring would help ensure proper policy design and performance, supplementing monitoring by the European Commission. For this purpose it would make sense for the Fund to limit further Extended Fund Facility support to a modest amount such as €1 billion, thereby shifting onto the Eurozone most of the additional gross disbursements that otherwise might have been expected from the IMF.

Full article on VoxEU

© VoxEU.org