Maturing Debt and Default Risks

Extract

The old trend of ever smaller amounts of government debt maturing and being retired gracefully is passing. In its place, a boom in issuance as a consequence of the recent crisis will lead to a youthful increase in the amount of maturing debt that requires settlement. The UK has the advantage, relative to some other countries in the Euro Area, of being able to issue longer-term debt (see figure 1), which helps avoid the so-called ‘roll over’ risk associated with maturing debt. By contrast, the long period of surpluses run by the Spanish government caused them to obtain over 75 per cent of recent funding from short-term markets.