During the five years of the Corralista government, the State Government’s Treasury Department spent more than 11,383 million pesos on debt interest alone.
This is despite the fact that, according to former governor Javier Corral, who was declared a fugitive from justice in Chihuahua for allegedly embezzling 98 million pesos used to restructure the administration’s loans, this process would lower the rates to be paid on the money lent. When in 2017 his government disbursed 1.8 billion pesos in the payment of its obligations, by 2018 the amount had shot up to 2.6 billion, according to the analytical reports of the public debt and other liabilities of the Ministry of Finance. By then, the Corral regime had already carried out a first restructuring of ten bank loans, which, it claimed, would allow for lowering interest rates.
In 2019, the State Treasury again allocated 2.6 billion pesos to interest, while in 2020 the amount dropped slightly, now to 2.3 billion pesos; in 2021, the last year of that administration, the amount spent was 1.8 billion pesos.
These expenditures only occurred in the area of short- and long-term debts, in addition to those contracted with suppliers, since, additionally, contingent debt and the use of zero-coupon bonds generate their own interest. In both cases, only in 2017, the expenditure was 2,234 million pesos, official documents show. For contingent debt and zero-coupon bonds, 1,719 million pesos were spent in 2018; in 2019, 1,538 million; in 2020, 1,069 million pesos, while for 2021 it was 965 million. The second restructuring, for which Corral faces a criminal procedure, according to the former president would leave savings of between 1,000 and 1,500 million. “The debt restructuring brought important benefits: reduction of the interest rate, release of resources and savings of more than 7,000 million pesos,” he said. Debt balances also increased year after year. The former PAN member closed the first year of his mandate with a debt amount of 54,659 million pesos, a figure that rose to 57,133 million in 2018; in 2019 it grew again to 59,118 million; and although in 2020 it exceeded 60,864 million, it ended 2021 with a total amount of 57,676 million pesos. Currently, as of the second quarter of 2024, the balance of Chihuahua’s liabilities is 57,988 million pesos, the reports show.
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