Greece has raised €390m, paying 4.64% interest, via a sale of six-month Treasury bills, the debt management agency said today.
The issue, which had an original target of €300m, was subscribed more than 4.5 times over, the PDMA agency said in a statement. 'The total bids reached €1.36 billion and the amount finally accepted was €390m,' the agency said.
The rate was lower than the last equivalent treasury bill issue in January which sold at 4.9% but for a significantly higher amount of €1.95 billion.
The debt-hit country is seeking a return to money markets in 2011 after a scare over its public finances saw its credit dry up, driving it to the brink of bankruptcy and an EU-IMF bail-out. No date for the comeback has been given.
Although interest rates payable on long-term Greek debt have declined in recent weeks, they remain way too high for a government struggling to jumpstart a recession-gripped economy.
Greece is already trapped under a debt mountain of some €300 billion,a burden equivalent to 152.6% of total economic output this year. There is now talk in Brussels of enabling Athens to buy back some of that debt with money borrowed from a euro zone crisis fund.
