Ecuador’s domestic debt rises to $ 1.8 billion

The financing registered in the Budgetary Execution of the Ministry of Finance grew between February and March to $ 1.8 billion.

While revenues registered for indebtedness until February 2017 amounted to $ 2,496.9 million, so far in March the figure rose to $ 4.296 million.

However, the most important increase occurred between March 3 and 6 when it increased from $ 2,937 to $ 4,296.9 million; ie it rose $ 1,356.9 million, as reported yesterday by the former finance minister Fausto Ortiz.

How has the Government achieved a significant increase in debt figures?

According to the Ministry of Finance´s report, most of this increase comes from domestic debt bonds. Thus, the domestic bond debt rose from $ 1,266.9 million in February to $ 2,026 million in March.

From what is known unofficially, the Government would have exchanged a portion of the stock of short-term obligations (which are not considered debt) that it had with the Central Bank of Ecuador in Treasury Certificates (Cetes), and that amounted to $ 5,286 million per medium-term bonds for about $ 1,500 million.

When making this change, due to longer-term obligations, then they are already registered in the Ministry as debt. For Ortiz, what is recorded in the budget execution are revenues. He considers that we would be facing an operation similar to the one that was done last year with EP Petroecuador.

Jaime Carrera, director of the Observatory of Fiscal Policy, said that the Government has issued bonds significantly and has increased the stock of domestic debt, which is “worrisome.”

However, this issue does not affect the debt percentage, since after a legal reform the Government now takes into account the percentage of the consolidated debt (which does not include the public sector debt).

Faced with requests for an explanation on the issue, according to Finance, the reporting system Bussiness Intelligent (BI) (used to measure the budget execution) is presenting problems.

They ask citizens to be aware of the update of the data, in the coming days, and also the monthly debt bulletin that comes out in the middle of each month.