Investors are definitely warming to Greek debt. <br /><br />On Tuesday Athens was able to borrow money – repayable in six months’ time – at the cheapest interest rate since its debt crisis began in early 2010.<br /><br />The yield was 3.01 percent, down 0.59 percent from a similar auction in March.<br /><br />In addition most of the buyers of the 1.3 billion euros worth of six-month treasury-bills were from outside Greece – around 80 percent according to a debt agency official. <br /><br />Foreign take-up of treasury issues in the last three months had hovered at around 40 percent.<br /><br />These short-term T-bills are Athens’ sole source of market funding; for longer term borrowing it is reliant on EU and International Monetary Fund bailout money. <br /><br />The sale is encouraging for Greece’s planned return to longer-term bond markets sometime in the first half of this year.<br /><br />The country is looking to sell about two billion euros of five-year bonds, according to government and banking sources, in its first foray into bond markets since the first of its two international bailouts in 2010. <br /><br />Greece does not need to return to debt markets imminently, its finance minister said this week.<br /><br />“There is absolutely no rush, nor is it a precondition, to do this before Easter (April 20)”, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said in an interview on Greek radio station Vima FM.<br /><br />Stournaras’s comments follow media speculation that a sale could take place as soon as this week. <br /><br />They also come two days after the head of the eurozone’s bailout fund, Klaus Regling, warned Athens not to pay investors too high a yield, to avoid increasing its debt load.
