{"id":547803,"date":"2026-04-24T06:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547803\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T06:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:43:12","slug":"greece-to-be-overtaken-by-italy-as-eurozones-most-indebted-country-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547803\/","title":{"rendered":"Greece to be overtaken by Italy as eurozone\u2019s most indebted country in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"600\" class=\"picture-main-block-image\" data-nxsrc=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Rome.png\" alt=\"Greece to be overtaken by Italy as eurozone\u2019s most indebted country in 2026\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Rome.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>A view of Duomo Cathedral and, in the background, the Porta Garibaldi business district, in Milan. [Claudia Greco\/Reuters] <\/p>\n<p>Greece will no longer be the eurozone\u2019s most indebted country by the \u200bend of this year, with its public debt set \u200cto fall below Italy\u2019s, according to sources and data from Italy\u2019s new budget plan.<\/p>\n<p>Greek debt is estimated to be reduced to about 137% of gross domestic \u200bproduct this year from 145% in 2025, two senior officials \u200btold Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, Italy sees its debt rising from 137.1% \u2060of GDP in 2025 to 138.6% in 2026, under the Treasury\u2019s \u200bmulti-year budget plan (DFP) published on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreece will not be the most \u200bindebted country in the eurozone \u2013 from this year,\u201d one of the two Greek officials told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>The new estimate for Greece\u2019s debt ratio will be \u200bincluded in the country\u2019s new multi-year fiscal plan that will be \u200bsubmitted to the European Commission at the end of this month.<\/p>\n<p>Italy\u2019s debt will \u200cremain \u2060virtually stable at 138.5% in 2027, before declining to 137.9% in 2028 and to 136.3% the following year, its budget plan showed.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2020, Greece\u2019s public debt \u2013 the highest in the eurozone over \u200bthe last two \u200bdecades \u2013 has \u2060shrunk by more than 45 percentage points to 145% of gross domestic product last year. Italy cut \u200bits debt by some 17 percentage points over \u200bthe same \u2060period.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2060some \u200b7 billion euros from its first \u200bbailout later in the year. [Reuters]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A view of Duomo Cathedral and, in the background, the Porta Garibaldi business district, in Milan. [Claudia Greco\/Reuters]&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,460,1294,479,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-debt","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-italy","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}