Government borrowing costs paid by Italy and Spain have fallen to their lowest level relative to Germany in 16 years, as investors reward Rome and Madrid for belt-tightening and grow more worried about surging debt elsewhere in the Eurozone.
The extra yield on 10-year Italian debt compared with German Bunds — a closely watched measure of the risk associated with lending to Italy — narrowed to within 0.7 percentage points this month, the lowest since late 2009.
Strong economic growth in Spain has helped to cut its 10-year spread with Germany to less than 0.5 percentage points. That is also the lowest since before the Eurozone crisis, when high debt loads drove up both countries’ borrowing costs and stoked worries about the currency bloc breaking up.