State debts on a steady rising course

Thousands of enterprises doing business with with the state have found themselves in a no-way-out situation due to the latter’s inability to pay its debts to them. Finance Ministry data showed on Monday that the state’s expired debts to third parties amounted to 4.9 billion euros in the first seven months of the year; along with pending tax rebates they reach up to 5.7 billion.

In fact, the total debts of the state are far greater, as the official data do not include debts created in the last 90 days, when the economy deteriorated considerably due to the capital controls. Debts are considered expired 90 days after the day they were originally due.

There is also no sign of debts to third parties starting to drop anytime soon, given that the snap elections this month will cause a delay in the bailout program – i.e. the payment of a 3-billion-euro tranche.