(Paris) Interest paid by governments for their debt rose the fastest in almost 40 years in 2022 due to the sharp rise in rates, according to a report published on Tuesday.
Globally, interest paid by governments “skyrocketed” by 20.9% in 2022 compared to 2021, “the fastest increase since 1984”, according to the manager’s annual sovereign debt index. of assets Janus Henderson. According to him, this increase reflects “both the rise in interest rates and the swelling of the stock of loans”.
In France, the jump in the debt burden is even 43%.
This explosion of costs, 1380 billion dollars in total in 2022, is due in particular to the policy of central banks: in order to combat inflation which has reached record levels since the 1980s in many Western countries, they have raised their rates directors at a breakneck pace. While they were just above 0% at the start of 2022, they had fallen close to 4.5% by the end of the year in the United States.
Since then, the trend has continued and the US central bank has raised its rates for the tenth consecutive time, taking them to 5.25% at the start of May.
Governments are therefore “up against the wall”, according to Janus Henderson, who predicts that these costs “will double over the next three years”.
Indeed, States will repay debts issued at a time when interest rates were low in order to re-borrow at rates that are now much higher, at the highest for 10 years in many European countries as well as in the United States. United.
The rate of the French 10-year loan, which refers, was around 2.9% on Monday, against 0.19% on December 31, 2021.