Portugal has easily raised €2.5 billion in a debt auction, just days after Standard & Poor's downgraded its credit rating to junk status.
Portugal is one of the euro zone's weakest members and is stuck in recession. It needed a €78 billion bailout last year.
Portugal's government debt agency said interest rates were flat or lower in today's sale of three-, six- and 11-month Treasury bills amid strong demand.
It sold €1.25 billion at a rate of almost 5% in the 11-month bills - the longest-term debt it has sold since taking the bail-out.
Spain lenders' bad loans hit 17-year high
The level of Spanish banks' bad loans hit a new 17-year high in November, a fresh sign of weakness in the country's battered financial sector, official figures showed today.
The value of the bad assets - mostly property loans that were gutted by the bursting of a construction bubble in 2008 - reached €134.1 billion or about 7.5% of total banking assets, the central bank said.
This was the highest figure since 1994 and higher than the 7.4% figure reached in October and 7.2% in September. It has more than doubled from 3.37% at the time of the collapse in late 2008.
Spain's banks are a major source of concern for financial markets which fear the debt crisis that sank Greece and has snagged Italy could spread there. Economists warn that Spain is heading into recession this year.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took office last month promising to further reform the banking sector which has been undergoing a major restructuring since the global financial crisis from 2008.
His government has warned that Spanish banks will have to make provisions worth €50 billion this year to cover losses on bad property-related assets. Figures published by the housing ministry earlier this week showed that house prices fell by 6.8% in 2011, the sharpest annual fall since the crisis erupted in 2008.
