This fact, on the one hand decreased the value of collateral available to banks for borrowing from the Eurosystem, and on the other hand made their access to the interbank market particularly hard and expensive, gradually leading to their exclusion. With the debt restructuring in 2012 the value of the bonds held by Greek credit institutions was severely impaired.
From FY09 to FY13, real GDP growth averaged just 2.8 percent; this increased to above 4 percent over the next three years. In fact, real GDP growth touched an eight-year high in FY16. Meanwhile, the government’s ongoing fiscal consolidation efforts limited the average budget deficit to 4.6 percent in FY16, against 8.2 percent in FY13.