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Disbursements

Financial Assistance

Disbursements

User Guide

The top chart shows, for the selected programme, the cumulative EFSF or ESM disbursed amount at a selected point in time. Immediately below the chart, each circle represents an individual disbursement. Hovering over the chart and circles displays detailed information. The filters to the left allow the selection of a programme and to view disbursements through three filters: ‘Use of funds’, ‘Contracts’, and ‘Funding strategy’.
The ‘Use of funds’ view provides information on the purpose of a loan. Clicking on a colour in the chart allows the user to filter the listed disbursements below. This list also links, where available, to the related Managing Director’s proposal and press releases published at the time.
The ‘Contracts’ view provides a filterable list of all the financial assistance agreements between the beneficiary country and the EFSF or ESM, as well as revisions to the contracts. Hovering over the arrow icons displays detailed information about the contracts and links to press releases. The bottom chart visualises the disbursed and available amount of funds under a specific lending contract. If there are several contracts – the user needs to select the contract first in the top chart.
The ‘Funding strategy’ view displays the disbursements based on how they were funded – either by the diversified funding strategy or back-to-back funding. For the former, the table below the chart shows the details of the bills or bonds originally issued to finance the disbursements, including links to the term sheets of the securities issued.

Disbursements Dashboard

Context Information

During EFSF/ESM financial assistance programmes, loans to beneficiary countries are provided in one or more tranches, which may each consist of one or more disbursements. The ESM Board of Directors (where all 19 ESM Members are represented) decides on the disbursement based on a proposal from the Managing Director, taking into account the European Commission’s report on the compliance with the agreed reforms by the beneficiary ESM Member.

Each disbursement has a pre-defined purpose determining how a beneficiary country should use the funds. A common use of EFSF/ESM programme funds has been to finance a country’s budget, known as fiscal needs, but there are also other country-specific uses. In the Spanish programme, for example, the Spanish government dedicated the entire amount the ESM disbursed to bank recapitalisation.

For early EFSF disbursements to Ireland and Portugal, so-called back-to-back funding was applied – which means that certain EFSF bonds were earmarked to finance a loan to a beneficiary country so that the size and maturity of the EFSF bond exactly matched the amount and maturity of the loan. 

This type of funding was largely replaced by a strategy under which funds raised through bond and bill issuances are not attributed to a particular beneficiary country. Instead, under this diversified funding strategy, funds are raised through a variety of instruments, then pooled and disbursed to programme countries. The only type of loan where back-to-back funding continued to be used were loans to beneficiary countries for bank recapitalisation. Disbursements for this purpose are cashless – provided in the form of EFSF or ESM bonds and/or bills. Standard EFSF/ESM loans, provided as part of a macroeconomic adjustment programme, were disbursed in cash.

Glossary

Managing Director’s proposal
A proposal for a financial assistance facility agreement, including the financial terms and conditions and the choice of instruments, which is prepared by the ESM Managing Director and submitted for adoption by the Board of Governors, as part of the establishment of a new facility.
Diversified funding strategy
A funding strategy under which the ESM and EFSF make use of pools of short- and long-term funding instruments to fund loans.
Back-to-back funding
Issuances of ESM funding instruments which are intended to fund specific disbursements of financial assistance, and which have the same financial profile in terms of amount, time of issue, currency, repayment profile, final maturity and interest basis, as the disbursed loan.
Weighted average maturity
The weighted average repayment period (in years) of all loan tranches provided by the ESM or EFSF to a particular beneficiary country.