Greece currently has the greatest liquidity of all time. With an additional €1 billion that the country received yesterday as the 4th tranche of grants from the Recovery Fund, its cash reserves have now exceeded €45 billion.

However, in two months cash reserves will be drastically reduced, as in December it will allocate €8 billion to early repayment of 2028 government debt. Athens will thus send a new message of stability to the markets but, at the same time, will limit the need for interest payments that have skyrocketed due to rising interest rates internationally.

It is indicative that by September this year the country has incurred an extra €801 million more than last year, just for extra interest alone! This amount is equivalent to all the increases the State is giving to pensions in 2024 and 2025. At this rate, the burden will reach or exceed 1 billion euros, which is the annual cost of the salary increases given to civil servants this year.

Specifically, according to data from the General Accounting Office, interest expenses in the nine-month period from January to September last year were 6.4 billion euros. For the corresponding period this year, they were budgeted to increase to 6.740 billion euros (+340 million), but in the end 7.201 billion euros were required, i.e. 461 million euros more than expected. This also wiped out the revenues that the state expected to collect in the 2024-2025 biennium from the introduction of the Resilience Fee (instead of the Accommodation Fee) on hotels and Airbnb, and the Cruise Fee (cumulative 457 million all together).