Editing Economy of Greece (section)

==== Historical Debt ====

Greece, like other European nations, had faced [[List of sovereign debt crises|debt crises in the 19th century]], as well as a similar crisis in 1932 during the [[Great Depression]]. In general, however, during the 20th century it enjoyed one of the highest GDP growth rates on the planet
<ref name="Angus Maddison">[[Angus Maddison]], [http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/Monitoring.shtml "Monitoring the World Economy 1820-1992"], OECD (1995)</ref> (for a quarter century from the early 1950s to mid 1970s, [[Greek economic miracle|second in the world after Japan]]). Average Greek government debt-to-GDP for the entire century before the crisis (1909–2008) was lower than that for the UK, Canada, or France,<ref name="Debt Past"/><ref name="Historical Debt IMF"/> while for the 30-year period (1952–1981) until entrance into the [[European Economic Community]], the Greek government [[debt-to-GDP ratio]] averaged only 19.8%.<ref name="Historical Debt IMF"/>

Between 1981 and 1993 Greece's government debt-to-GDP ratio steadily rose, surpassing the average of what is today the Eurozone in the mid-1980s (see chart right).
For the next 15 years, from 1993 to 2007 (i.e., before the [[2008 financial crisis]]), Greece's government debt-to-GDP ratio remained roughly unchanged (the value was not affected by the [[2004 Summer Olympics|2004 Athens Olympics]]), averaging 102%<ref name="Historical Debt IMF"/><ref name="Debt 1980">{{cite news |url=http://www.economicsinpictures.com/2011/09/greek-debtgdp-only-22-in-1980.html|title= Greek Debt/GDP: Only 22% In 1980|work= Economics in Pictures |date=1 September 2011 |access-date=31 August 2018}}</ref> - a value lower than that for Italy (107%) and Belgium (110%) during the same 15-year period,<ref name="Historical Debt IMF"/> and comparable to that for the U.S. or the OECD average in 2017.

During the latter period, the country's annual budget deficit usually exceeded 3% of GDP, but its effect on the debt-to-GDP ratio was counterbalanced by high GDP growth rates. The debt-to-GDP values for 2006 and 2007 (about 105%) were established after [[Greek financial audits, 2009–10|audits]] resulted in corrections according to Eurostat methodology, of up to 10 percentage points for the particular years (as well as similar corrections for the years 2008 and 2009). These corrections, although altering the debt level by [[Greek financial audits, 2009–10|a maximum of about 10%]], resulted in a popular notion that "Greece was previously hiding its debt".