Spain’s Public Debt in 2013

A good article in the Spanish-language Actibva reviews what to expect from the Spanish government regarding debt and deficits in 2013. I can’t speak to the predictive ability here but the article is good at a minimum for its highlighting of the facts and figures surrounding Spanish public debt.

The concern, of course, as I have been noting is that Spain needs to rollover old debt and issue still more debt because of deficit spending. And this means that Spain needs a low interest rate in order for the debt not to become burdensome and for Spain’s public debt trajectory to remain sustainable. According to the article, Spain is going to need to issue about 230 billion euros of debt over the course of 2013 based on a projected deficit figure of 4.5%. Last year the total was 249 billion euros, or 8% more. The 230 billion euro amount for 2013 includes the need to rollover 159,153,000,000 euros of maturing debt, about 3.9% more than in 2012. January, April, June and October are the periods of greatest funding need due to maturing debt with about 20 billion euros to rollover in each of these months. So the first test is coming this month. The first Spanish auction set for 10 January, this Thursday.

90% of Spanish debt goes into the hands of financial institutions.

Source: Actibva