Debt is an important instrument for financing public spending on infrastructure or for productive purposes, as our Constitution states, but if it is not taken with prudence, responsibility and transparency, it can be a problem and a burden for future generations. Be careful, one issue is the internal debt, and another is the external debt, particularly with certain international organizations, due to the issue of conditionality, which generally includes stabilization measures with a strong impact on the creation of permanent and well-paid jobs.
The same is different between the national debt and that of the states and municipalities.
Today we see how Argentina suffers, due to the negotiations to meet its debt commitments with the IMF, an experience not far from that of Greece a few years ago. Uruguay in the 1960s, which I document very well, Samuel Lichztenstejn and the impact on the Mexican economy in the times of Presidents Echeverría and López Portillo.
Also of the so-called monetary-structuralist controversy, when ECLAC was the axis of the discussions at the World Congress of Economists that took place in Mexico at the end of the 1970s, with the presence, among others, of Celso Furtado, Paul Sweezy, Raúl Prebich, among others. other economists. Likewise, let us remember the postwar reconstruction in Europe with the Marshall Plan, and the discussions in the 70s and 80s in Latin America and Mexico, about the Stabilization Programs and their impact on the popular economy and national sovereignty.
On the other hand, regarding the subnational debt, the business of the banks is to lend and collect interest, the longer the credit lasts, the better business for them is restructuring, that is, lengthening the payment terms during the contracted period. , reduce debt service, but the next administration will “restructure” again, in a vicious circle. The growth of state debt has been lower in recent years, in addition to being concentrated in a few states and less than 50 municipalities, when we have around 2,500.
I have commented several times on its evolution, and the restructuring processes of the subnational debt, which began, with that of 2006 of the State of Mexico, arising law firms that earn a lot and states whose debt becomes eternal, in the end surely We don’t pay for it, nor our children, maybe our grandchildren.
The issue of debt is not the amount but its cost, amortization and interest. Fortunately, it was achieved years ago with the Budget and Treasury Responsibility Law of 2006 and the Financial Discipline Law more recently, limiting the indebtedness times of state governments, for example, they can no longer indebt the last year.
With the pandemic due to the strong dependence of states and municipalities on federal resources, some entities may have had the need to increase their debt, or not pay short-term debt with suppliers and contractors. This is what should have been paid in the year and was not done, some concepts such as works and actions in progress, but it has also been a silent damage to public finances, which begins in the first year “kicking the ball” until reach the last year when it is no longer possible to do so, leaving an immediate debt to the new local administrations.
He has held various professional and academic positions, including: Head of the Regional Coordination and Institutional Relations Unit of the Federal Authority for the Development of Special Economic Zones, Internal Comptroller, Federal Court of Fiscal and Administrative Justice, Auditor Special of the Federalized Expenditure, in the Superior Audit of the Federation, Head of the Coordination Unit with Federal Entities (of the SHCP Member of the Governing Board of the SAT General Coordinator of the works of the National Treasury Convention carried out in 2004 representing the Secretary of the Treasury Secretary of Finance of Oaxaca President of the National College of Economists Professor of Economic Policy, Public Sector Economics and State Finance at the Faculty of Economics of the UNAM, since 1978. Due to his outstanding experience as a public servant, as well as in the academic field, the Superior Auditor has various publications ones, among which are: Equity and fiscal effort, the Mexican experience (2006) Citizen participation and social control (1994) Fiscal federalism in Mexico 1989-1994 (1994) Social and economic factors of corruption (1993).
Since 1979 he has collaborated for various local and national print media. Currently, he participates with opinion columns in important media such as El Financiero and the weekly Eje Central.
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