Tourism helps Greece to post wider surplus in June The lure of the Grecian sun, as well as a smaller trade gap, pushed up Greece's current account surplus - which measures the difference between imports and exports - to €663m (£565.5m) in June, from €73.1m a year ago. Tourism receipts, the country's biggest revenue stream, rose 21pc year-on-year to €1.59bn in June, according to the Bank of Greece. This brings total tourism revenues in the first half of the year to €3.32bn, up 18pc compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, Spanish bad bank loans soared to a fresh high in June, with almost 12pc of households and companies now behind on their payments. Bad debts climbed to 11.61pc of total lending, the Bank of Spain said yesterday, the highest since records began in 1962. The data showed that €176.4bn of loans were more than three months past their repayment deadlines. Twelve months earlier, the bad loan rate was 9.65pc. Spain's economic slump has continued to drive up non-payment of loans by companies and consumers, hurting profits at lenders as they set aside provisions to cover losses. The parent company of Santander UK said last month its bad loans ratio had climbed to 5.18pc from 4.76pc in March as it reclassified €2bn of loans as doubtful to comply with new Bank of Spain criteria for refinanced loans. "Bad loans in Spain are going to keep rising for 18 months after any recovery starts," said Simon Maughan, head of research at Olivetree Financial Group.