By Lefteris Papadimas and Giuseppe Fonte
ATHENS/ ROME, April 23 (Reuters) – Greece will no longer be the euro zone’s most indebted country by the end of this year, with its public debt set to fall below Italy’s, according to sources and data from Italy’s new budget plan.
Greek debt is estimated to be reduced to about 137% of gross domestic product this year from 145% in 2025, two senior officials told Reuters.
By contrast, Italy sees its debt rising from 137.1% of GDP in 2025 to 138.6% in 2026, under the Treasury’s multi-year budget plan (DFP) published on Thursday.
“Greece will not be the most indebted country in the euro zone – from this year”, one of the two Greek officials told Reuters.
The new estimate for Greece’s debt ratio will be included in the country’s new multi-year fiscal plan that will be submitted to the European Commission at the end of this month.
Italy’s debt will remain virtually stable at 138.5% in 2027, before declining to 137.9% in 2028 and to 136.3% the following year, its budget plan showed.
Since 2020, Greece’s public debt – the highest in the euro zone over the last two decades – has shrunk by more than 45 percentage points to 145% of gross domestic product last year. Italy cut its debt by some 17 percentage points over the same period.
Greece, which is recovering from a decade-long financial crisis and three bailouts totalling about 280 billion euros, plans to repay ahead of schedule loans worth some 7 billion euros from its first bailout later in the year.
(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Athens and Giuseppe Fonte in Rome, Additional reporting by Gavin Jones in Rome, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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