Figuras oficiales de deuda de algunos países de la ZE excluyen pasivos potencialmente grandes

Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret

Se teme que haya más deuda soberana en varios países miembros de la zona del euro de lo que se reporta oficialmente, porque sus gobiernos excluyen de sus cifras oficiales las garantías que hicieron para los bonos de empresas estatales y bancos en peligro de incumplir (NYT). Además de Chipre, España, Irlanda e Italia, este artículo cita a Malta y Eslovenia, dos miembros pequeños cuyas cifras oficiales muestran deuda relativamente moderada.

No one expects any immediate need for additional national bailouts as a result of these lurking liabilities. Only Cyprus, whose problems are well documented, is in bailout talks. And Greece continues to occupy its own special sick ward.

Still, there have been a few tremors lately.

Last month, when Standard & Poor’s reduced Malta’s bond rating by a notch, to BBB+, the ratings agency cited the implicit liabilities of government guarantees. In particular, S.& P. highlighted the increasingly weak financial condition of Malta’s state-owned energy giant, Enemalta. That company’s debts represent 60 percent of the 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in loans that Malta has backed.

To include those obligations would lift Malta’s debt load from its current moderate level of 74 percent of gross domestic product to a much more worrisome 90 percent.

Meanwhile, Slovenia’s debt-to-G.D.P. figure would increase to 80 percent, up from the official 50 percent figure, if the calculation included 3 billion euros of loan guarantees for businesses. They include DARS, a highly indebted though profitable company that builds and manages the country’s highways. There are also a number of unprofitable banks like Nova Ljubljanska Banka that are dependent on the government for their survival.

Pointing to the bank liabilities in particular, the ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service knocked down Slovenia’s debt rating last August, to Baa2 from A2, just two notches above “junk” status.

For the better part of a decade, euro zone countries have used sovereign, or government, guarantees as a way to let strategically important state-owned companies — including railway groups in Greece or car companies in France — raise money by issuing bonds in international markets. With the start of the financial crisis, this practice was extended to banks, which in many cases were no longer able to borrow on their own.

The thinking has been that since the guarantee is contingent only on these businesses failing, the liability need not be added to the country’s existing pile of debt. But as the debts of these companies and banks have soared, and as the financial health of the countries backing them has deteriorated, the debt specialists are beginning to take note.

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