Portuguese debt: ECB’s purchases below the 500 million euros threshold

ECB’s monthly purchases of the Portuguese public debt decreased again in June, reaching a new minimum: 498 million euros. Since the beginning of 2017, the bank headed by Mario Draghi has been cutting back on the purchases of Portuguese securities, within the public sector purchase programme (PSPP).

For the third consecutive month, ECB decreased the amount Portuguese Treasury bonds purchases, standing in June below the 500 million euros’ threshold. The central bank bought six million euros less than in the previous month, but in comparison to May 2016, when the purchases were larger, the difference is quite significant: 953 million euros. This means that in one year, ECB’s purchases dropped to around one third of what they used to be.

This amount is also quite below the average Portuguese debt monthly purchases, which stands at around one billion euros. By the end of last month, ECB had a total of 28.1 billion euros in Portuguese securities.

This decreasing tendency has been apparent since the beginning of the year, but has become clearer since April, when the size of ECB’s stimuli programme was reduced. Instead of the 80 million euros per month, ECB decreased the purchasing rhythm to 60 million euros. This measure marked the beginning of the stimuli reversion, which were implemented to revive the European economy.