Greece paid higher rates to raise €1.3 billion in a sale of six-month treasury bills today, two days after a shock anti-austerity vote.
"Total bids reached €2.6 billion and the amount finally accepted was €1.3 billion," the debt management agency said in a statement.
It said the interest paid to investors rose to 4.69%, up from 4.55% at the last equivalent sale on April 10.
The auction came as Greek voters on Sunday dealt a stinging rebuke to political parties that spearheaded austerity cuts over the past two years.
The conservative New Democracy and socialist Pasok parties, which have alternated in power since 1974, saw their share of the vote collapse to 32.1% on Sunday from 77.4% at the last election as voters supported instead a raft of anti-austerity parties.
This left the two parties, which favour sticking to the bail-out but with easier terms, with 149 MPs in the 300-seat parliament, insufficient for a re-run of the outgoing coalition led by technocrat Lucas Papademos.
The radical leftist Syriza party was set today to begin trying to build an anti-austerity cabinet and prevent fresh elections, a day after the conservatives failed to form a coalition government.
Greek leftist vows to reject loan terms
The head of Greece's radical left-wing Syriza party said his cabinet will reject all austerity measures imposed under an EU-IMF loan deal, if he manages to form a new government.
"The public verdict has clearly nullified the loan agreement and (pledges) sent to Europe and the IMF," Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address.
The country's youngest political leader at 37, Tsipras was earlier given three days to form a government by the head of state, President Carolos Papoulias, after a similar attempt by the first-ranked conservative New Democracy party failed.
General elections on Sunday did not produce a clear winner but gave an overwhelming boost to Syriza which now has 52 deputies in parliament, making it the second biggest party.
The main parties that have pledged to continue deficit-cutting reforms, New Democracy and socialist Pasok, now only send a combined 149 MPs to the 300-seat parliament, not enough for a re-run of the outgoing coalition led by technocrat Lucas Papademos.
"Citizens have crushingly voted against the barbaric policy of loan agreements. They put an end to plans for 77 new austerity measures in June, plans to lay off 150,000 civil servants, and to additional measures worth €11.5 billion," he said in his address.
"This was a mature, conscious political choice," he added.
Even assuming that Syriza and other anti-bailout parties could overcome their gaping differences, they can only muster 151 votes, enough for just a razor-thin majority in parliament. The Communist party, which has 26 seats, refused to cooperate today.
However, some constitutional experts have argued that a government could theoretically be backed by just 120 lawmakers depending on the number of deputies present on the day of the confidence vote in parliament.
Tsipras, who will probably not seek the prime minister's post for himself, said that banks should be placed under "national control" and a "moratorium" applied on loan repayments. He also called for an international accounting committee to be formed to investigate how much of Greece's debt is "odious".
"The crisis is not a Greek particularity," he said.
The political developments in Greece and also France, after presidential elections on Sunday, stoked anxiety about the fate of the EU's tough fiscal pact adopted in March to end the eurozone's crippling debt crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the chief proponent of austerity as the main way out of the crisis, said yesterday it was "of utmost importance" that Greece stuck to its reform path, while conceding this was "difficult".
A European Commission spokeswoman said Brussels "hopes and expects" that the future government of Greece will respect its commitments. Market analysts saw the verdict as added evidence that Greece will soon be exiting the euro.
Greece, in its fifth year of recession with unemployment at 20%, is committed under the previous government to finding by June another €11.5 billion in savings over the next two years.
