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Cyprus bid to exit debt may weigh on output
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Cyprus’s efforts to extricate itself from its massive debt could weigh on output for the next decade, the IMF warned yesterday, in a review in which it said the island was well on track in its economic adjustment program.
The Mediterranean island nation is following a three-year austerity program after it almost went bankrupt in March. The International Monetary Fund and the European Union have provided it with 10 billion euros (US$14 billion) in aid.
In its second progress review, the IMF said the program was on track and Cyprus’s recession, although severe, was shallower than expected. A modest economic recovery in the eurozone was helping through increased trade.
The IMF in early December trimmed its forecast for the island’s contraction to 7.7 percent from 8.7 percent. But it stuck by its initial forecast for a cumulative economic contraction of 13 percent for the 2013-2014 period.
Years of fiscal slippage and a banking system heavily exposed to debt-crippled Greece took Cyprus to the brink of financial meltdown. Its banks chalked up massive losses on an EU-endorsed restructuring of Greek sovereign debt, to make that country’s debt mountain more manageable, but exacerbating Cyprus’s problems.
Cyprus shut down one insolvent bank and confiscated deposits to boost the capital buffers at another when the IMF and the EU refused to use taxpayers’ money to recapitalize the lenders. It was the eurozone’s first such “bail-in” process, in which depositors were forced to help bail out their banks. The 10 billion euros in aid is mainly for fiscal purposes.
The IMF said the fall in Cyprus’s gross domestic product was set to be steeper, and the subsequent recovery slower, than in most other eurozone program countries.
That reflects the need for both households and corporates to deleverage, it said, as their combined debt stood at 280 percent of GDP at the end of 2012 — among the highest in the euro area.
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